The Movie: The Animatrix is a collection of nine short animated films, but an aspect about it that I don't think is advertised enough is that each segment was done in a different style by a different director, and there is a nice variety of styles to choose from, both in terms of visual style, and animation style... if that makes sense.

Visual style ranges from exactly like the movies to something vastly different. "Final Flight of the Osiris", which was done by the same people who did the Final Fantasy movie was done in a similar, super realistic looking computer generated style, in which the world of the story looks 100% identical to the way the movie looks. In contrast, there's the gritty film noir meets Brazil-style retro-tech look of "A Detective Story".

Some of the story lines are related to the movies, and some have nothing to do with them at all. "Final Flight of the Osiris" takes place just before, or right at the beginning of The Matrix: Reloaded, on a ship full of people we haven't seen yet. Others fill in some backstory, like A Detective Story, which is a glimpse into Trinity's life before the first movie, and "Kid's Story" which is the story of the guy in the second movie who almost worships Neo for saving his life, and how he got himself out of the Matrix. The two "Second Renaissance" segments cover how the war with the machines started in the first place.

Overall, I really enjoyed this DVD, with its various plot points being an interesting supplement to the live action movies, and it's various styles of animation providing different an interesting array of contrasting visions of the world of The Matrix. If you love the movies, The Animatrix is a must see.

By the way, my personal favorite segments are "A Detective Story" for its overall visual style, and "Kid's Story" for it's story, its soundtrack, and also it's visual style.

The DVD: This is a fairly well mastered DVD, with an excellent video transfer that shows a good deal of resolution and color quality, as well as a rich surround sound track as well. Extra features consist of audio commentary on two of the segments, and some DVD-ROM stuff that I haven't checked out yet.