I just finished watching The Matrix with some of the older urchins. I know I’m about five years behind the times, but I’d never seen it because I usually refuse to watch “R” rated movies; I hardly ever enjoy wading through all the violence, sex and language to get whatever good is there. Anyway, The Matrix is an interesting movie with lots of blatant Christian symbolism, a Messiah figure coming back from the dead, people trapped inside an unreal and ultimately evil world, a city of promise and refuge called Zion. There are also lots of references to Alice in Wonderland and Oz, fantasy/dreamland classics. The philosophical questions are asked: “What is Truth? What is Reality? How do we know what we know?”
On the other hand, there’s a lot of movie time spent on shooting and fighting and chasing, all scenes that I, like a typical chick, tire of in about thirty seconds flat. Also, I’m not sure the movie ever answers any of the questions it raises. And I have some questions of my own:

What’s with the phones? Somehow the good guys took over the phone system?
Morpheus, the god of dreams and sleep? But in the movie he’s into waking people up, right?
How are all those people being made into battery acid (or whatever) and still walking around? I know they’re “virtual people”, but doesn’t making them into battery juice affect their minds or something?
Who’s in control of all this world (in the movie)? If everybody is made up of artificial intelligence and computer programs, where’s the real intelligence?
And, finally, why is Elrond with the bad guys? He needs to get himself out of that matrix and back into Middle Earth!