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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Inception - Movie Review

Mind Blowing. Thrilling. Ride of a lifetime. All of the action verbs and adjectives in the dictionary can barely describe the incredible essence of the movie Inception. Director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Prestige, Memento, and Batman Begins) has established himself as one of the most innovative and smart filmmakers in today’s movie industry. Inception has already grossed $234 million, which is an amazing mark for a movie, in which most filmgoers had no background of the movie. Nolan showed his brilliance during the trailer when he left viewers wondering what they had just seen, which may have even captured more viewers. The mystery of Inception was half of the battle when watching the movie because it is such a concept idea. Another genius move by Nolan was casting Leonardo DiCaprio as the main character, an extremely popular and great actor. Rotten Tomatoes, a website that shows how popular movies are with film critics gave Inception an 87% mark, which is one of the highest marks in the last several years. The general consensus for Inception on Rotten Tomatoes is, “
Smart, innovative, and thrilling; Inception is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually".
I’m confident that Inception will be up for some top Oscar nominations. Nolan took over eight years to write this masterpiece (right after Memento), but it is one of the most well written movies I’ve ever seen. To anyone that hasn’t seen the movie so far, I recommend this movie to anyone that is willing to sit through long movie but it is definitely worth every single minute. Inception is a thrilling ride and it goes down as one of my favorite movies in the past five years.

*Spoilers begin here*

Nolan starts off the movie by confusing the viewers by placing them right in the middle of one of their dreams. Once you first see Cobb (DiCaprio) in the dream, and then you see him in real life sleeping, it confuses the audience because they want to discover what is going on right away. Nolan continues to test the audience’s patience as they attempt to discover Cobb’s past as well as their current mission. Nolan finally rewards the audience when they introduce Ariadne (Ellen Page) and as Cobb introduces Ariadne to the inception and dream process, he is also guiding the audience to how it all works. The introduction of ideas to Ariadne also reveals the inner problems that Cobb has been facing his entire life and the reason that he needs a team of dreamers instead of just himself to complete missions. The final mission provides many different plots as Cobb and Ariadne attempt to escape the dream and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) attempts to make a maze and help everyone receive the kick to jump out of the dream. Most of the movie’s analysis is going to come down to the final scene whether Cobb’s totem is going to fall or stay up.

My take on Inception is that Cobb is dreaming at the end of the movie, thus the totem stayed spinning, and it is unknown whether Mal is correct on her jump to death to escape the dream. Cobb’s inception of the idea that Mal must die to hit reality stays within her brain after they escape the first dream, but in Cobb’s real life she continues that they must die to hit her reality. Cobb’s guiltiness is what drives his inner feelings throughout the movie. After dying, Saito had fallen into the limbo, where he has been stuck for hundreds of years but at the end of the movie, I believe Cobb is imagining that he meets Saito because I don’t believe that Cobb can jump into another person’s limbo. The big catch for me, is that because the main level of the movie ended up being a dream for Cobb (my take on the movie), the entire movie was Cobb’s imagination and that none of the movie was particularly real life. What makes this movie excellent is the amazing acting by all the actors, and the ability of Nolan to make people think in ways that they have never before.

Future projects for Christopher Nolan include the third and final installment of the Batman series that he started and made one of the most popular movie series. Nolan has already commented that the Joker will not be present in the final Batman film. After Batman, he will shift his focus to a Superman movie that he says will have a different perspective than any other Superman movie before.

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