In 1999, it redefined sci-fi filmmaking. With its bullet time, its pinwheeling wire-work fight scenes and its incredibly dense multilayered plotting, it was like nothing moviegoers had seen before in a big-screen Hollywood picture. The two sequels, both released in 2003, "The Matrix Reloaded' and "The Matrix Revolutions," didn't really measure up. They amplified the original but broke no new ground. Enter "The Matrix Resurrections." It harks back directly to the original, with several characters explicitly acknowledging the connection: "After all these years, to be going back to where it all started. Back to the 'The Matrix,' " one intones. Its opening scene is a reprise of the start of the original, with a squad of cops, soon to be dead, busting in on the character Trinity. Off to the side an observer watches and remarks, "We know this is how it all began." And then promptly realizes something, somehow, is different. And away we go. Through the looking glass (literally) into a "Matrix" world both very familiar and oddly strange. Mimicking the original, and then bending it. Writer-director Lana Wachowski, flying solo this time without sibling Lilly, her collaborator on the previous three pictures, operates from the premise that the original has become so deeply embedded in popular culture that we the audience are living in a world shaped by "The Matrix." Neo. Trinity. Morpheus. Red Pill. Blue Pill. All are instantly recognizable pop cultural touchstones. Fans of the series know them. Or think we do. Wachowski cleverly plays with that. Keanu Reeves, bearded and these days answering to the name Thomas Anderson, his moniker before he took the red pill, is a renowned video game designer. His game? "The Matrix." His fame? Universal. People around the world love that game. They revere him. Fans go gaga in his presence. He's the star of a big corporation. His games have inspired three movies. Warner Brothers, he's told in a board meeting, wants a fourth. He's abashed by this fame and also disturbed. He doesn't know the source of his inspiration for the game. He has no memory of being Neo. Well, that's not quite true. He has nightmares. Flash-cut visions of scenes from "The Matrix" series bedevil his brain. He's in therapy. "Am I crazy?" he asks his therapist, played by Neil Patrick Harris. "We don't use that word in here," Harris replies. There's something about him, as he says it.