Watching all the movies on the Warner Bros. 50-movie box set that I bought for cheap. This week the random number generator made a whole bunch of Alice in Wonderland references during The Matrix.

Here’s what happens: Mr. Anderson is secretly the computer hacker known as Neo. He is in search of something online called the Matrix, and a mysterious figure named Morpheus. What he discovers changes everything he knows about the world, and about himself.

Why it’s famous: Groundbreaking special effects, high-flying martial arts, and a script that asks all the big, big questions about the nature of reality itself.

Get your film degree: The Matrix is famous for that otherworldly green lighting, but the only time we really see that is during the office scenes at the beginning. In other scenes, we have flashlights lighting the opening fight scene, flickering fluorescents in the bathroom fight, and practical yet unflattering lights aboard Morpheus’ ship. The lighting informs each environment in a way that reinforces the movie’s themes. This is probably true of every movie, but we notice it in The Matrix because The Matrix is so stylized.

Movie geekishness: Not everything about The Matrix is perfect. The office scene, in which the villainous agents interrogate Neo in his office, has a bunch of sci-fi weirdness with Neo’s mouth sealing shut and some robot-fish thing inserted into his stomach. The problem is that the opening fight scene already established that we’re in a sci-fi world where things are wonky, making this office special effects sequence redundant and therefore unnecessary.

Thoughts upon this viewing: I don’t need to tell you The Matrix is great. You already know The Matrix is great. A lot of action movies claim to also be smart, but The Matrix is one that lives up to that.

Next week: All work and no play…

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