The Matrix

Though The Matrix ultimately overdoses on gloom-and-doom grunge, over-elaborate cool and especially running time, it's just clever enough to enable [the Wachowskis] to nix the sophomore jinx following 1996's Bound.

I know almost nothing of the intricate techniques that make The Matrix as eye-filling as it is brain-numbing, but I can tell you that... [its visuals] are wondrous to behold.

There's more form than content in The Matrix, but Bill Pope's swooping, noir-inflected cinematography is wonderfully complemented by Owen Paterson's inventive production design, a great soundtrack and the best fight choreography this side of Hong Kong.

Give [the Wachowskis] an A for effort and three A's for those effects. The Matrix is a dazzlingly original visual adventure.

Casting the robotic Reeves as the hope of humanity may be this oppressively long, self-satisfied movie's funniest gag, but it doesn't really make the game any fun. It means we get stuck with the least interesting player.

A futuristic paranoia extravaganza, it would seem to have far more appeal to an artificial intelligence than it would to human beings and other carbon-based life forms.

The Wachowskis proceed to turn the world as we know it into a virtual reality landscape with a 20th century tech-noir look (lit with a sickly green hue, like the glow of an old IBM computer screen) and the physics of a video game.

A $60 million, high-tech assault on the senses and a pretentious insult to the mind.

A cyberpunk thriller that's so much fun to watch, it could single-handedly reboot the genre.

The Wachowskis seem to be saying that while state-of-the-art effects speak for themselves, loud and clear, there's still room amid all the kicking and shooting and shouting for the carefully observed human emotion.