Set at the end of the second century of the current millennium, the Matrix trilogy (which is screening on back-to-back Wednesdays at the alcohol-and-eats-serving Central Cinema) is about a world that humans believe is real, but that is, in fact, a gigantic simulation operated by malevolent machines. The real world is an environmental nightmare (scorched sky, rubble everywhere, polluted water); the virtual world is an affluent capitalist city (great restaurants and shops, nightclubs, an autotopian infrastructure). Some humans, however, are not happy with the virtual world (called the Matrix). These individuals wake up in the real one, learn the truth, and become rebels. The leader of the resistance against the machines and their powerful, soul-sucking simulation is Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), and the only hope he and his rebels have of defeating the machines is a 21st-century messiah named Neo (Keanu Reeves).  by Charles Mudede