The Matrix

I've seen The Matrix some eight times now, and I have yet to be able to tear my eyes away from it while watching it. Okay, the first time I could. Honestly, the first time I saw The Matrix I didn't think much of it. It was dark, and gritty, and grainy, and drab, and truth be told, I wasn't even impressed by the special effects. How this happened, I have no idea. Suffice it to say that despite the fact that I didn't like it, I kept thinking about it for the next several months, until I finally buckled and rented it, to see if I liked it any better. I did. Within a few weeks, I owned it, and was watching it again and again. Of all the DVDs I own, this one is the one that never leaves the front of my TV (where I put all the movies that I want to watch in the near future), always comes with me on trips, and is the one that I pop in when I don't feel like dealing with either the pressure of watching a film I haven't seen before or the repetiveness of watching one I have.

And even now, I still notice things that I've never noticed before. Like, of course, I knew that Trinity told Neo that he was searching for Morpheus when they first met, in the club, but I never noticed that Neo's computer was running searches on Morpheus (pulling news articles, etc.) when we first see Neo, asleep. The other thing I noticed for the first time is that the final battle between Smith and Neo takes place in the same hotel as the opening battle between Trinity and the agents. I love when movies come full circle like that.

I wanted to watch it again in preparation for seeing The Matrix Reloaded, to make sure I still had a good handle on all the events and philosophy and stuff in the first one. But it's plenty worth watching over and over on its own terms.