Inception

Wow. I'm not even sure where to begin. There is just too much to digest. For the most part it's, of course, excellent. Super original ideas. I'm not even sure if I have ever seen a film like this. I really need to watch it a couple of more times to fully digest, but seriously, there is nothing quite like this film. It's a provisional 4 stars for me right now, but there is more to digest. There where a few moments of what I felt was unintentional confusion, but that's the only qualms I have thus far. The ending is wicked.

Inception 2010



Sleep Deprivation Inception

My alarm clock wakes me up at 11:00 AM, resultantly I fall asleep at 12:00 AM. Don't sleep well, get up at 3:00. Then I work from 9 to 6 and I'm ready to drop dead. It's 9:00 PM when Inception starts.

I've fallen in love with dream movies, most of which I was about to fall asleep while viewing the first time. Inception is not that kind of movie, it rewards coffee and red bull. Even half-asleep it's not inaccessible though. It's a psychological heist film, that continues to drop deeper and deeper into the subconscious of a young billionaire. The team already states the instability of dreams within dreams and how inception only has a chance at working, but the stakes aren't realized until they see how Cobb (Dicaprio) has risked all of them.

None of these themes are new, but I can't name a lot of multi-layered dream heist films. Dicaprio gives possibly his grandest performance yet, with Cottilard stepping up to his challenge. The action is what makes Inception though. Time is slowed, buildings collapse and transform, and eventually it's time to raid some arctic complex. This was the biggest detractor from my viewing, you need to be wide awake to follow these action scenes. Nolan is moving the camera like a mad-man and I don't think until I can see this on the the small screen, that I can truly love this movie.

this time

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i cnt wait to see this.

Looking forward to seeing this today. Good review.

hmm. Mixed feelings. At the beginning absolute confusion, no idea what's going on, thinking jeez this 148 minutes is going to drag mightily. Once Nolan let's you understand what's going on you're at least grateful the story can unfold and take you with it.
The special effects are awesome, the pace manic, the acting good, it's well done no doubt but for me I couldn't understand why the landcapes of the dreams they designed to enter Fischer's mind in order to plant the idea had to be so complicated and on such a huge scale. We ended up in a scenario that was for all the world a James Bond film. I couldn't help thinking that there was a great idea but one which could've worked in a smaller, darker, deeper film not one that played like a computer game.

It didn't drag, in fact the time went quickly, it's a clever film but it didn't satisfy and I wouldn't bother seeing it again. I see it has a 9.3 rating on imdb already which makes it number 83 out of the top 250 films. I think time will sort that one out.

Very nice little review, Meat. I find your story about your tiredness quite amusing because I had to wake up very early to see Memento with the rest of my class mates when I watched it for the first time, and was tired thinking I was just going to sleep through the film. Obviously that didn't happen. Yep, Nolan's films will do that stuff to you. Who needs a redbull and coffee when you have a Nolan film, eh?

INCEPTION

First off I have to say this movie is far from the typical movies that I go and see and at first when the story began I thought I was going to be blown away and the storyline was going to go so far over my head I wouldn't enjoy it. Within 30 minutes into the film I totally started to grasp bits and pieces of the plot of the movie and tried to sort them the best I could in my own brain. Some of those early thoughts wee correct conclusions and others were way off. I continued to plunge into the storyline as hard as I was plunging into my 6 dollar box of popcorn. The story started to become more and more clear as the characters began to develop and the sense of what the plan they had was going into place. The acting was superb as DiCaprio was brilliant as was the rest of the cast. It wouldn't be a Juno review without a mention of Ellen Page who I thought did a great job in her role. This role for her could definitely land her more prominent type roles in the future. The main thing this film brought to me with it's brilliance is it opened my mind to go deeper into my own exploration of the film world.

Saw this today. Wow. Just...wow. Review definitely forthcoming. I still need to finish one for Despicable Me, too, but maybe it's for the best, because there's a hell of a lot to digest here.

I must admit Juno, I ended up liking Paige's character more than I thought I would, and she did a decent enough job considering it's her, more so than the rest of the other cast, that is the voice of the audience. Christine, i'm not sure if a film that's as high in concept as this would have worked with a smaller budget. The human mind is limitless when unconcious and in order to reflect that, well, I agree with Nolan, you need a pretty big budget.

Anxiously awaiting your review, Yoda.

Saw the movie twice in 2 consecutive days.

Loved it, this is the movie that I'd love to sit with my friends & discuss over couple of drinks..
Sadly all you people are faraway!!!

Hi Pres, I'm glad you liked the film as I know you're a big Nolan fan so it's good to not be let down . I didn't actually mean a smaller budget film, cos yeah I agree you need the fx to recreate dreams, I really meant something more intimate , more claustrophobic but still with surrealness at the heart. All the shootouts just didn't do it for me, it felt like a dream one of my sons would have after playing computer games all night

I don't think more intimate dreams really would have worked, actually, and I felt the reasons for the dreams being on such a grand scale were pretty well laid out.

For the training sessions, intimate dreams would be fine. But for the main sequence, no. You have to remember that Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) is a high powered businessman whose subconcious has been trained to guard against these intruders. His subconcious projections are militarized. As such, the maze put forth for him had to be on a huge scale and complex in order for him to believe it. The shootouts were justified because the team were up against Fischer's own subconscious militia.

As for Cobb's (DiCaprio) personal subconscious world, he and his wife spent what equated to 50 years building it. So it stands to reason that it would be on an enormous scale as well.

Happy to see positive reviews here for Inception. I hope to check it out this week. Someone please enlighten me some more.

ok, I'll come back on those points. Agreed Fischer is a high powered person, but do all high powered people have to be depicted as having a subconscious that's so defensive? Think about dreams, sometimes you know you're having a dream but you're still not in control. The big budget of the film gave some great fx I'm not denying I did enjoy those, but there could've been some more devious psychological dream invasion that could've used fx just as brilliant.

ok re Cobbs 50 year world, a little sad to see you could've built anothing you wanted and you end up building a high rise city of concrete and glass. So this could've been just a part of their world, but there could've been some amazing scenarios in this section.

Anyway, I'm not even saying I didn't like the film, it's just for me it didn't soar like I imagined it was going to.

The movie specifically states that Fischer's subconscious had been trained to defend itself against extractors like Cobb and his team.

Cobb also specifically states that he and his wife loved that type of building.

This is also in my review thread but I reckon it'll get a little more coverage in here.



Inception

Christopher Nolan/2010/Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cilian Murphy, Marion Cotillard

The zinger that closed my previous review would better serve this capsule for Inception, a screwball-scramble of a mind-puzzle**** from hot-off-the-block 'sure thing' Christopher Nolan. Inception could allegorize, in smashy-smashy pots 'n pans form, the filmmaking process, with Leo's plucky dream thief a substitute for Nolan, himself an architecht of design. Indeed, this is very 'out-there' for a summer blockbuster, its theology far less dimestore than standard big-budget hokum, but much of this is stymied by repetitive gunfights that make more noise than sense. Make no mistake, this is more Michael Bay than Andrei Tarkovsky, only explosions and visual gymnastics outnumber ideas here. Although it is 12 years, two Batfilms and $170 million later, like his first film Following, made for tuppence in Eraserhead monochrome, Inception is overpopulated with the kind of hocus-pocus that obfuscates rather than illuminates.

Yes, but the point is why is "militarization" the only line of defense? It's a dream, therefore limitless, so why aren't there pink elephants with laser beam eyes or any zillion other elements other than guys in suits with guns? Could nobody in that narrative involved in constructing dreams get beyond The Matrix? There's only the one thing that is really different: the freight train that comes in the middle of the street in the first level of the dream. So why aren't there more differences like that instead of more and more guys with guns? Once the suspected "intruders" of the dream have been identified, why don't the walls just collapse and crush them or fire materialize out of thin air to burn them to crisps? Even with militarization, once the armed defenses realize that they are being shot at as a countermeasure, why don't they turn into bulletproof robots or have invisible force shields? Obviously the answer is a bit of a cheat, to give the dream characters a fighting chance, but armed operatives with no aim who are felled by one single shot by the dream warriors is hardly much of a defense, is it? As the one character says as he ups the size of his armament a bit, "dream bigger". The guys with guns part definitely got very repetitive for me, as well. The train out of nowhere and the anti-gravity hotel are by far the most interesting bits, and that's because they're not more of the well-dressed Keystone Cops.



The movie definitely works despite these holes, but they are a flaw in imagination and a bit of a narrative cheat.

I think.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Went and saw this last night and wasn't terribly impressed. I thought it was a little over long. And the big "twist" at the very end of the film was so ridiculously predictable even I could see it coming. I thought it unnecessary and pointless.

I completely agree with Christine and will be interested to hear other MoFo's views after a repeated viewing or two. I know I'm not in a huge hurry to see it again.

Holden made a reference to the old A-Team television show in his review. I couldn't agree more. All we really needed at the end was for Cobb to wake up and give us Hannibal's trademark line.

Anywho...

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

But Fischer's subconscious only populates the maze with its projections. The maze itself is in the mind of one of the team members and so Fischer's ability to manipulate that environment is limited. The freight train was brought into the equation by Cobb's twisted subconscious, just it was his subconscious that brought his wife in.

I'll agree that part of it, too, is that the characters have to be given a fighting chance but I think a big part of it is that the audience has to believe the world just as much as Fischer has to believe it. Yes, this is taking place in a dream, but it still must have some basis in reality or there's not much sense of actual danger. I think, even in dreams, you can only expect so much suspension of disbelief from the audience.

Yes, but what good is the training if all it's good for is armed guys who can't hit anything? If the training can't make your subconscious any more effective than that, then he needs to get a refund. Yes, the two great bits in the final dream assault, being the train and the anti-gravity hotel, have NOTHING to do with Fischer's defenses. So then what's the big challenge? They can morph into other projections and do what they want when it helps get them out of a corner they've painted themselves into, but not when it can logically throw up legitimate defenses.



That's the problem with such movies, setting limits on the limitless. Why are his defenses just inept soldiers? The only answer the movie gives you on any kind of examination is, "because", like a ten-year-old playing with his action figures. The movie is very clever in lots of ways and a treat visually, but it isn't as deep as it pretends and certainly not airtight. That's the point.


Even in Inception's dreams, maybe.