So, I had planned to write a long post on Chris Nolan's Inception. I can't. I just really, really enjoyed this movie. I have no complaints, aside from the fact that I had to take a bathroom break, and there was no point in the movie where that I could do so without missing some information.
I am sure the movie had some flaws I could nitpick, or you could take issue with some of the character motivation because it wasn't to your liking (but, you know, Nolan did establish Cobb's character fairly well). And there's likely someone out there who wants to argue with some epistemological angle Nolan took.
Stick it in your ear.
For the first time since, oh... Dark Knight (and, for different reasons, Birdemic) this is the first movie I've been sure I would want to see in the theater a second time. This movie was pretty much exactly up my alley, so... thanks, Mr. Nolan!
No long post on Inception for you people. I'm sure many of you saw the movie over the weekend. Please feel free to sound off.
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Couldn't agree more (about this or Birdemic). loved it, going to see it again, probably.
ReplyDeleteLife conspired against me and I did not get to see the movie last night as previously planned. I'm hoping to see it while on vacation this week.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of movies, "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Captain Blood" showing on the same night sounds like a great double billing.
I really liked Inception, too, but I didn't end up quite LOVING it the way I expected to. There was something about the way that they had to keep constantly injecting exposition into the dialogue which irked me a little (necessary to the plot, I guess, but still bugged me), and, to me, all of the various rules that went along with navigating dreams just felt sort of artificial- so carefully crafted to perfectly move the plot along that, to me, they ultimately felt a bit contrived (hard to create dramatic tension in a scene where death means nothing? Oh wait, we've got something for that. It's called limbo. Did we forget to mention limbo earlier? I swear that it's existed all along...). I also didn't really love DiCaprio's Cobb. I really thought the rest of the cast did a great job, though, so that helped (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy were real standouts, I thought). And then there's the fact that I thought the dreams themselves could have actually been a little more creative. Did anyone else notice that there was lots of cool stuff involving architecture and landscape, but that was mostly the full extent of the strangeness of the dreams? My dreams have ninjas and scary alien clowns.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, though, I thought Inception was far more creative and interesting than the vast majority of movies out there, and most definitely worth seeing. I'm just not sure it's going to work its way into my upper echelons of my all time favorites (and I thought that it might when I saw the trailers).
Maybe I need to see it again, though.
Honestly, I REALLY liked Inception. It hit all kinds of buttons for me. But I think its a mistake to see it as much more than a heist movie with a sci-fi pedigree.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind that some information was withheld until it was necessary to the plot. I'm never a fan of the "it seemed extraneous at the time" school of expository delivery, and I think they handled the delivery of information as gracefully as they could, alluding to some of it earlier in the film (we saw Limbo in the first shots, we saw The Kick with the bathtub).
I didn't think they did much with some of the "if something goes wrong, the projections go Day of the Dead on you" aspect after setting it up. And I did note that they chose to keep the environments relatively concrete.
That said, personally, my dreams are usually VERY concrete (from what I remember. I am likely to remember a dream once every month or two at best), so while I've become very used to the idea that in movies and TV, things tend to go all Dali in dreams, I wasn't overly bothered by less than fantastical dream scenarios.
Walking out, I had a strong suspicion that you might love Inception. The combination of tough guy/noir style characters, a dead wife for the ultimate femme fatale, and mind beding alternate realities all sort of put it right in your wheelhouse...
ReplyDeleteMy dreams are sometimes concrete, but not always. And my dreams are never brightly lit. It's always night, indoors, or overcast, I think...
And (possible SPOILER) wait a minute. If that was Limbo at the beginning, how come they could get people out of it just by shooting them (maybe the sedation issue, but they told us that they needed the sedation just to get people way down into the dream levels, so...).
ReplyDeleteAll so very confusing.
I definitely need to see it again. I can't decide if I'm not giving this movie enough credit.
Haven't seen it, but I am always getting the large soda and regretting it during long movies. So, I find this site very useful:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.runpee.com/#/Inception-region-US-lang-EN-key-121
I hope you find it useful as well.
Wow! I will totally be checking this from now on before watching any movie over 90 minutes.
ReplyDeleteSpoilers ...
ReplyDeleteI thought it was supposed to be questionable if Dom ever made it out of Limbo because you never saw either Dom or Saito get killed. Some theorize that the ending was part of Limbo still.
Sure. I think Nolan wanted that left open.
ReplyDelete