It’s been 20 years since The Matrix brought hot leather, tight one-liners, bullet time and the walls of reality crashing down. Twenty years since the world first gasped in tandem with Trinity as Neo’s body convulsed in violent shock at the high-speed hands of Agent Smith. And as nerd and normal human alike shared goosebumps when Neo unlocked bullet time for the first time and made everyone sigh with cinematic joy. The Matrix is a colour-coded, DVD-record-breaking – 1.5 million units in a week – meme-laden joy of a film that should be on every watch list from now until we’re turned into happy little batteries plugged into a machine.

Explaining what the movie is about is the equivalent of trying to stuff an oiled rabbit into a cage made of candyfloss. It’s part dystopian reflection on humanity’s obsession with artificial intelligence; part analysis of human psyche that asks if we would rather be trapped in a fake world of red meat and aerobics versus eating pureed gloop with a body full of holes; and part futuristic glimpse into the what-could-be if technology did take over.