Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Xandrieth Xs Well, the thing about the movie is that it has great animation, stories, representation, suspense, concept and thrill…. But well, all though it will make you think, rethink, contemplate and stick to till the end enjoying the film to the last bit….. But the thing is you won't make anything out of it. Cause the doesn't show a story but a couple of them. It's basically a side addition to the Matrix series and if you wanna understand this anime…. You gotta watch the Matrix series first….So don't watch this before you watch that….But don't dare to miss this after watching the Matrix series.... It goes everywhere the film didn't.... It's totally worth the time....

lagudafuad The Animatrix is meant to be a bridge between what we don't know about the war between humans and machines and what we know as The Matrix the movie, but in the end I just found it hard to keep awake after the third short film animation in the eight short animation film. By the time of the fourth short animation I was far gone. I woke up rewound the DVD to the fourth and watched it from there down and I just regretted it, because it seemed like God was trying to save me from a mishap and I was stubborn that I want to go through the fire.The Wachowski brothers are anime fans, so they wrote four of the eight episodes in The Animatrix, which served as The Matrix trilogy back story; the remaining four stories are independent. The brothers came up with the stories while promoting the first movie in Japan and the production and release was done to coincide with the release of the last two matrix film (The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) in the franchise.The stories have a high critical rating, but to me they are over rated, this movie is filled with so many lackluster dialogues and monologues and the whole flesh being put on a bony matrix foundation just seemed to me like a marketing strategy to keep fans watching.To me the sad part about all of this is that the matrix last films (The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) that it was released along with are just full of effects and no full justification of their purpose. We may desire happy endings and The Matrix Revolutions kind of gave us that, but it came with a price of two tragedies. Here this movie is meant to show the justification of those tragedies, telling us why the human race lost the battle and how the machines even got into the battle in the first place.My final take is that, all you have to do is see the first matrix, it has all that you need to know, let your imaginations fill up the gaps in between because all this other additions are just a waste of your time.The characters Neo, Trinity, and Kid also appear in this 8 animation short film package, with their voices provided by their original actors Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Clayton Watson.www.lagsreviews.com

refresh daemon The Animatrix is a compilation companion piece to the Matrix films that collects nine short animated films set in the world of the Matrix. While it helps broaden and inform the world of the Matrix, the individual segments vary in their success in storytelling."Final Flight of the Osiris" opens up the film and is the CG animated number. In itself, it's just a short story about events that occur off- screen during the second Matrix film. At it mostly acts as backstory, it doesn't lend itself very much dramatic weight and spends a whole lot of time at the beginning showing off CGI attempts at life-like animation as well as CGI skin. While the visuals themselves are fairly impressive, I was ultimately underwhelmed. 5/10."The Second Renaissance Parts I & II" are two short films that chronicle the events leading up to the dystopia of The Matrix. An animated fauxcumentary, it sets the background of the Matrix world, step by step, showing how humans created the machines and the machines beat the humans after tons of abuse. While it's all quite well drawn (and contains dozens upon dozens of references to other films), I found it about as interesting as reading a poorly written history textbook. It does contain more interesting text than "Final Flight", especially as it deals with humanity's errors, but I have to say that despite it's strong visual style, it edged on being a yawnfest. And it doesn't pull punches. Another downside is that the more it exposed some of the backstory about how the world of the Matrix happened, the harder I found to buy it, which consequently had a negative effect on how I view the original Matrix movie. 6/10."Kid's Story" is really where this collection begins to pick up. I found it's hand-drawn blurry style to be rather catching, especially in capturing the waking-dream-like world of the Matrix. While the story mostly just deals with a kid's escape from The Matrix, it holds some interesting subtext about the nature of dreams (even within dreams) and ideas of fate. Not to say that this is masterful, but rather, it's a decent little piece, for what it is. 7/10."Program" is a piece that left me unsatisfied, because it raised questions that it failed to resolve. Essentially set within a swords- and-samurai simulation, the protagonist encounters a friend-as-adversary in the program. They talk about the nature of reality as they fight and as her friend lets her in on a dark secret. But the ending creates serious doubts in the believability of the confrontation within. Again, interesting art, but the story has large enough issues that it was hard to enjoy. 5/10."World Record" was actually kind of interesting. It deals with a world class runner who, in breaking records, begins to see cracks in his reality. It's quite simple and fortunately it's short, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. 7/10."Beyond" is by far my favorite piece of the bunch. A teenage girl starts looking for her cat, Yuki, and meets some boys who she follows to a local "haunted house", where she discovers both Yuki and an apparent glitch in the Matrix. The glitch makes some rather strange things happen, like gravity working weird and reality fading in and out. It works as an exploration of finding the strange and wonderful things in life and how reality/society/etc tries to "erase" these mistakes. Fantastic, even if it has the least to do with the Matrix mythology. 8/10."A Detective Story" deals with a detective named Ash who gets hired to find the hacker Trinity. His explorations lead him to some rather strange discoveries about reality. Working as an homage to hard-boiled detective films, I found it pretty interesting and it very strongly reminded me of Cowboy Bebop, including it's protagonist, who sort of reminded me of Spike. 7/10."Matriculation" left me with mixed feelings. Reminding me strongly of Aeon Flux in its art style (I'm guessing it's the same director), the film ultimately deals with the attempts of Zion to create machine "rebels". The Zion folk capture a runner-robot and plug it into their own Matrix and interact with it in a somewhat strange world. Unfortunately, for me, not much happens narratively within this machine- Matrix except for a series of somewhat interesting visuals and this segment goes on for quite a while. I got bored. But then it gets interesting and darker at the end and I found the ending to be rather interesting itself. So a mixed bag. 6/10.All in all, the Animatrix is mostly watchable, but doesn't have as many highs as it just sits in the middle. The art is mostly gorgeous, but many of the stories overstay their welcome or reveal gaps in logic, whether inside the story itself or in the mythology of the Matrix. As a companion piece to The Matrix, it works all right, even if it might show off huge cracks in the Matrix mythology. As such, I have to say it's really more of a work for fans, although I think "Beyond" is solid enough in itself to watch on its own. It's okay.

Rapturous Rich If anyone was left thinking this was just another attempt to make money from the hugely successful film franchise then they can think again. This collection of nine ten-minute long films serves a far greater purpose than to just line the Wachowskis' pockets that little bit more. They go from filling the gap between the first and second film, to telling us, in detail, how it all came to be like this, to how different people escape from the matrix in their own personal ways, to glitches in the system and how some humans try tactics different to all out offensive in their part fighting the war. The collection runs for 90 minutes and each film is different to the next not from just plot but to style, approach and narrative too. Each director brings their own personal touch and their own ideas of The Matrix to the screen with them and it pays off tremendously where many collaborative film collections have usually fallen short and / or been abandoned due to creative conflicts. This is more than just synergy at work here; the Wachowskis are trying to share more of their fantastic creation with us, and giving other directors the chance to help them. While the anime idea was a move which has proved a little niche, but extraordinary all the same.In conclusion, The Animatrix is a great expansion on the mystery and awe surrounding the matrix and its origins, without completely throwing it out there and still keeping some cards to play later and things for us to find out ourselves yet, the Wachowskis are undoubtedly two of the most gifted creative minds in the film world today. Who else has a franchise so celebrated and brimming with awe and wonder which still feels fresh no matter how many times you watch it? George Lucas can wipe away that hopeful smile on his face for sure, because that title belongs to Larry and Andy Wachowski, and rightfully so. Their ability to even apply their film's ideas to things otherwise outside of it is an inspiring achievement and further cements them as surely some kind of demi-gods of cinema. The fact that they have still got fresh and interesting ideas means we could very well have The Matrix around for a lot longer than anyone first anticipated.Read the full review (with an in-depth look at each film/episode) at http://www.broken-sky.org/raw/?page_id=291