Latest Video: Attention spawn

By Ewan McDonald

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts. Same goes for movies: every so often along comes one that defines a generation, a mood, a time. Think Star Wars. Think Blade Runner.

For the cyber generation think The Matrix, out on video this week. It arrived in cinemas earlier this year, perfectly timed for 1999-ish, pre-millennium angst, all technological style over substance.

And for other generations wondering what the heck the kids are doing up there in their rooms, let an American critic put The Matrix into perspective:

"It lacks anything like adult emotion, and its themes and images arrive at a dizzying, stupefying pace, as if vomited up by some voracious creature that ate the last 20 years of sci-fi and action-movie history and only partly digested them.

"In fact, the wunderkind writing/directing team of Andy and Larry Wachowski [whose previous film was the gangster pastiche Bound] have performed a sort of public service for infrequent moviegoers.

"If you've never seen a John Woo film, any of the Alien movies, Blade Runner or either of the Terminators, or if you believe the Borg was a medieval castle and City of Lost Children was one of the more obscure Italian neo-realist films, then you can do all your pop-culture homework in one fell swoop.

"The Matrix is all of those films, as well as a video game, a primer on Zen Buddhism and a parable of the Second Coming. It may bore you to death or blow your mind - and it's long and convoluted enough to do both - but it holds nothing back."

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) works in an office in 1999. When he isn't at work, he becomes Neo, a hacker searching cyberspace for traces of a shadowy character called Morpheus, who is somehow involved with a mysterious theory called the Matrix.

Morpheus turns out to be Laurence Fishburne. His band of trendily clad renegades includes Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Cypher (Joe Pantoliano). The group dashes through the nameless city (played by Sydney) from one fashionably decaying set to another, one step ahead of face-melting enemy agents. Both sides are able to dodge bullets, run up walls and across ceilings and suspend the rules of space and time.

Morpheus offers Neo two pills: one will return him to his drone existence, the other will open his mind to the Matrix.

Guess which one he takes, and guess how the special effects crew goes completely over the top, out the side and back again. Guess you have to be a cyberkid.

* These are a little bit ... well, let's say those who still play the odd Van Morrison or Joe Cocker around the barbecue aren't forgotten.

Still Crazy is a Brit-comedy with a feel of The Full Monty or Brassed Off which sees Stephen Rea, Billy Connolly, Jimmy Nail, Timothy Spall and Bill Nighy as Strange Fruit, once-big British band of the 70s who get back together for a reunion tour.

In a year when the Doobie Brothers, Crosby Stills & Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and Fleetwood Mac are on the road, this is not such a ridiculous concept.

Writers are Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, who delivered TV classics such as The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, as well as The Commitments movie, And if you liked those ...

* Also out this week: Just the Ticket, Critical Care, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Paul Johannson, Holly Fields), Sink or Swim (Stephen Rea, Illeana Douglas), Operation Delta Force (Ernie Hudson, Jeff Fahey), Girl (Dominique Swain).