The Animatrix (2003)

The Animatrix was awesome. Having been awed by the first Matrix movie, and even more so with the second (at least the action scenes), and then completely un-awed by the third... this was a refreshing watch. It took me back to the first one, to the sensations I got from that one, along with plenty of other sensations.

It's a mesh of concepts, of spin-offs and backstories, and though they all do their jobs at explaining a certain segment previously left blank in the story, it feels like they don't need to make sense. Maybe because they're animated. There's something about them that just beckons to my imagination rather than my mind (yeah yeah they're the same thing, but you get what I'm saying).

The animations (there are 9 of them) all feature distinctly different styles: of animation, of story, of narration, of overall structure and atmosphere. My favorites are the one with the skateboard, the one with the haunted house and the one with the runner. Even if some of the other ones (read: all of the other ones) had much more elaborate visual effects and animation styles, these three conveyed a type of atmosphere that I particularly like: the somewhat magical one, the one that ends in a way that doesn't really reveal the outcome, and yet gives you both hope and doubt, or delivers a message along with the story, along with that short glimpse into lives of people who experienced something out of this world, or who were more than just normal people.

It's a both informative and inspiring mixture! Great movie! And this is not the first time I watch it btw, it's the first time I watch it digitally - have had it on VHS for some time.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle