Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A promotional making-of documentary for the film The Matrix (1999) that devotes its time to explaining the digital and practical effects contained in the film. This is very interesting, seeing as how they're giving away the cinematic secrets that they created solely for the this movie, that have now been spoofed and referenced in countless other films.
This making-of documentary captures a singular moment in cinema history — the birth of bullet-time and groundbreaking wire-fu choreography. Its novelty is genuinely exceptional because it documents techniques that were wholly unprecedented and would go on to reshape blockbuster filmmaking for decades. The cinematography of the behind-the-scenes footage is competent but unremarkable for the genre. The 'plot' and 'acting' categories are largely inapplicable in a traditional sense — the documentary follows a standard promotional structure with talking heads and on-set footage, offering little narrative tension or performance craft. The ending simply wraps up without any particular resonance, typical of promo docs. Its value lies almost entirely in its historical documentation of revolutionary filmmaking innovation.