The Animatrix

Reviews

NeoBrowser
Featuring nine animated shorts set in and around The Matrix, written and directed by the cream of Japanese anime creators, with the Wachowski brothers' blessing, The Animatrix arrives with a weight of expectation similar to Reloaded. However, while it's visually sublime - a magical mystery tour of animation styles- it doesn't fully deliver. Overall, the disc is debilitated by story issues and an overwhelming number of downbeat endings, which place it far from the cathartic exhilaration of the original movie. The Wachowskis themselves penned The Second Renaissance Part 1, a beautifully designed look at life pre-Matrix, using a faux newsreel style to chilling effect as the machines rise. Dark-edged, brutal and less smoothly styled, The Second Renaissance Part 2 shows those machines creating The Matrix. Program - the most truly manga-fied effort - is a love story set in Medieval Japan; artistically startling, but less profound than it thinks it is. An athlete breaks out of the Wachowskis' wonderland through sheer willpower in stylized short World Record. Bouquets for its strange, angular art; brickbats for a confusing story. A Kid's Story, on the other hand, is suffused with a dream-like quality, as Clayton Moore (who appears in Reloaded and Revolutions) tries to escape The Matrix with Neo's help. Until a climax which betrays the internal logic of The Matrix, Detective Story is by far the best of the shorts - a spot-on black-and-white noir about a detective enlisted to find Trinity. Beyond (a group of children exploit a glitch in The Matrix) is slight and atmospheric; while Matriculated (outside The Matrix, humans reprogram a machine) is a visually stunning, frankly hallucinogenic trip which out-Kubricks 2001. Lastly, The Final Flight Of The Osiris, the much-vaunted precursor to Reloaded: a triumph for CG photorealism, but the story is wafer-thin. Verdict - Though undeniably beautiful, overall, the disc is debilitated by story issues and an overwhelming number of downbeat endings, which place it far from the cathartic exhilaration of the original movie. 3/5 - Empire Magazine

GenerationofSwine
Ooooh, yeah, I just ripped into Revolutions for breaking from the way The Matrix and Reloaded looked and now... the Animatrix. And I'm not going to do the same thing. All the segments looked a little different, which I liked. But this comes along and it sort of fills in the backstory of the Matrix world. Almost like the, brothers at the time, sisters now looked at the Matrix and realized that Sci-Fi geekdom was loving it and they had to really explain a history so that the geeks like me had something to sink our teeth into and argue about at the comic book store on Wednesday nights. And then, with the Animatrix, they gave it to us... and THANK YOU.
Movie Recommendation
- Matriculated2003-06-03The human resistance works to convert a sentinel to their side. Part of the Animatrix collection of animated shorts set in the Matrix universe.More...
- The Second Renaissance Part I2003-02-04Tells the early history of how conflict began between the humans and machines. Part 1 of 2.More...
- Slackers2002-02-01Dave, Sam and Jeff are about to graduate from Holden University with honors in lying, cheating and scheming. The three roommates have proudly scammed their way through the last four years of college and now, during final exams, these big-men-on-campus are about to be busted by the most unlikely dude in school. Self-dubbed Cool Ethan, an ambitious nerd with a bad crush, enters their lives one day and everything begins to unravel.More...
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- Santa Fe Trail1940-12-20As a penalty for fighting fellow classmates days before graduating from West Point, J.E.B. Stuart, George Armstrong Custer and four friends are assigned to the 2nd Cavalry, stationed at Fort Leavenworth. While there they aid in the capture and execution of the abolitionist, John Brown following the Battle of Harper's Ferry.More...
- Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip1999-12-17After Dexter is confronted with robots who wish to "destroy the one who saved the future," he uses his time machine to see how he saved it. They declare that they are here to destroy the one who saved the future, and make ready to attack Dexter. Dexter easily destroys them with the use of various tools and gadgets from his lab. However, news that he is "The One Who Saved the Future" intrigues him, and he decides to travel through time to discover how cool he is. In the first time period he visits, Dexter finds a tall, skinny, weak version of himself working in office-designing cubicles, with Mandark as his rich, successful boss. The child Dexter unwittingly reveals the existence of blueprints regarding the "Neurotomic Protocore", and Mandark steals it after the two Dexters move forward in time.More...
- The Second Renaissance Part II2003-05-05The battle for Earth turns against the humans, despite their infamous desperate act of blackening the skies.More...
- You Don't Know Who You're Talking To2016-11-19A group of working-class losers plot to give an old gypsy mobster a heart attack in order to recover a valuable car. They decide to build a monster to scare him to death. But they're looking for trouble.More...
- A Detective Story2003-04-04A private detective is hired to find the elusive computer hacker "Trinity." Part of the Animatrix collection of animated shorts in the Matrix universe.More...
- Ginger and Fred1986-01-22Amelia and Pippo are reunited after several decades to perform their old music-hall act, imitating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, on a TV variety show.More...
- Last Letter2020-01-17It is only at their sister's and mother's funeral when a woman meets her niece after many years. The niece is now a grown girl. The sister takes on the task of informing the deceased's friends of the death while the daughter cannot bring herself to symbolically accept the demise of her mother. In the midst of all this an old flame messages the sister to say he is still in love with her, but is he messaging the living sister or the dead one?More...
- Pola X1999-05-12A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.More...
- Lupin the Third: Bye Bye, Lady Liberty1989-04-01Foiled repeatedly by the predictions of Interpol's supercomputer, Lupin has settled down. His partner Jigen asks him to pull one last heist: recover the Super Egg, a massive diamond hidden somewhere inside the Statue of Liberty.More...
- Harmony2015-11-13Set in a future world. Japan has created a great medical technology that controls ethics, health, and social interaction to create a perfect world. Three young girls attempt to stand up to this by committing suicide, but it doesn't work. Years later, Tuan, one of the girls who attempted suicide must prevent a crisis that threatens this "perfect" world.More...
- Numb2007-04-30Hudson Milbank is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who suddenly and strangely finds himself without any emotional feelings. He tries doctor after doctor and shrink after shrink, but nothing works. The Golf Channel, lesbian exercise classes and a dizzying variety of pills get him through the day, but don't quite solve his problem. His writing partner tries everything to get him back to normal, but it's not until Hudson meets Sara that he finds a real motivation to get better and to actually start feeling again. From the writer of Deuce Bigalow, comes NUMB, a romantic comedy following an unusual man looking for strange love.More...
- Plastic Little: The Adventures of Captain Tita1994-03-21Tita, captain of a pet-hunting ship for the galaxy’s upper class, finds herself babysitting Elysse, a scientist’s daughter being pursued by the military commander Lord Guizel, who’ll stop at nothing to retrieve the key to the high-powered weapon her father created. Dodging the lord’s clutches is a planet-wide game of cat and mouse for Tita and her crew, with one crucial difference: Mice don’t shoot back!More...
- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children2005-07-14Two years have passed since the final battle with Sephiroth. Though Midgar, city of mako, city of prosperity, has been reduced to ruins, its people slowly but steadily walk the road to reconstruction. However, a mysterious illness called Geostigma torments them. With no cure in sight, it brings death to the afflicted, one after another, robbing the people of their fledgling hope.More...
- Comedy2002-05-02During Ireland's War of Independence, a five-year-old girl sets out to save her village from the English army by trying to enlist the help of the rumored Black Swordsman, who only takes books of a certain genre as payment.More...
- O Homem que Parou o Tempo2018-09-13There is no descriptionMore...
- Love & Air Sex2014-02-07When brokenhearted Stan flies to Austin for the weekend in hopes of "accidentally" running into his ex-girlfriend Cathy, he arrives to find their best friends Jeff and Kara in the middle of their own vicious breakup. Before too long, battle lines are drawn – and with the Air Sex World Championships in town, anything can go down.More...
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