More than a decade old, but more visually striking than many new films.

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2012)

There's very little that one can say about the Matrix, you have to have been living under a rock for the last five years not to have heard of it, at very least.
At some time in the first half of the twenty-first century, human beings create artificial intelligence that ends up going to war with it's creators - and wins - almost. During the war the human's somehow "scorched the sky" therefore stopping the machines getting their source of solar energy, so instead the machines stop killing humans and instead capture them and imprison them in "pods" that keep them alive to act as an energy source (like a battery) for the machines. The premise of the film is that the world we see around us is an illusion, created by the artificial intelligence and fed into the "podded" humans' psyches to keep them quiescent. What you must not ask at this point is why the machines bother, why they don't just render all humans unconscious and have done with it - try not even to think it, it will spoil all of the spectacular set piece battles and kung fu choreography.
The special effects are impressive and the story is so much better than most of the ridiculously thin things that action movies use. It is difficult to know whether the film makers were taking the whole thing totally seriously, as sometimes parts seem a little tongue in cheek. I prefer to think they weren't taking things completely seriously, since although I have heard it said how deep the underlying philosophical questions of the film are, and heard people become obsessively intense about this, it is, at the end of the day, a light-hearted action flick with an interesting plot-line done extremely well. If that sounds too dismissive, I will add that it is one of my favourite films of all time, I just can't take it seriously that this is either a philosophical or a religious allegory.
So, should you see this film? Yes, it's thrilling, visually stunning, occasionally profound and also just one of the coolest movies ever made. So watch it now, if only so you can say you have. 10/10.