Inception (2010)

Forgive the blog break--I went on vacation for a week! And, surprisingly, we only saw one movie. Luckily, J and I convinced our fellow vacationers that Inception was the infinitely better choice over The Last Airbender.

So, if you're one of those people who are avoiding any and everything until you see it: it was great; see it; stop reading now.

And, if you're ok with spoilery chit chat about it: scroll down a bit and we'll chat.


















Christopher Nolan may be a mad genius. I don't actually know if he's mad but it seems he'd have to be to have Memento, both Batmans, and Inception spring from his head. But, Inception. Wow.

The casting was brilliant. DiCaprio didn't bug me the way he can sometimes. Page was excellent in what may be (finally!) a good transition away from Juno. Gordon-Levitt just keeps getting better and better and ended up being one of my favorite characters (um, hello, cool weightless hotel hall fight scene!). Cotillard was perfect and I love the Piaf references. Watantabe? Who doesn't love him? And THANK YOU Christopher Nolan for continuing to employ Cillian Murphy in things I can watch! And, um, Tom Hardy is my new favorite person. Then add on Berenger and Cain? Yeah, good, solid cast. And no one thought it necessary to upstage one another. Way to play nicely :)

Now, the tricksy plot. This film could have been a train wreck of ginormous proportions. It could be worse than The Last Airbender**. But it's not. It's a well written script that makes an incredibly complicated narrative structure simple for the viewer (thank you set designers and costumers for your help in that matter, too). Now, did I know the moment DiCaprio said inception was possible that he'd tried it on his wife. Yes. Did I care that I knew? No. And that's the trick. I don't know how to do it since I'm not a creative writer of any sort but I know that's one of the trickiest things to do: to allow the viewer to know a specific part of the ending without losing that viewer or making that viewer angry at the laziness of the writer. Nolan also managed to weave together two plots (the extraction and the mad woman in the dream basement) without compromising either.

The film is also just gorgeous. The worlds for each dream level are distinct but not distracting. The costuming and make-up works effortlessly (except Page's strange bun in the hotel scenes--that wasn't working for me at all).

A few specifics I can think of off the top of my head:

I LOVED the tie the dreaming people together like balloons and put them in the elevator solution. Way to be simple and effective.

I needed a little more exposition about Eames pulling out the big gun and saying "Dream bigger" because if he can pull that out of nowhere, why couldn't they have an armored van/truck, and, if he didn't pull it out of nowhere, I need to know so I'm not asking about armored vehicles.

Speaking of, the van falling into the water *may* have continuity issues?

Putting Mal in the basement instead of the attic was a nice touch.

Was the top spinning at the end a little infuriating? Yes. A little predictable? Yes. Perfect? Yes.




Shall we challenge Althelas to a post with her opinions? Yes, I think we shall ;)



**No, you didn't miss a post. I haven't seen and most likely will never see The Last Airbender. I simply like to make fun of Shamalamdingdong's movies as much as possible because they suck and he's given way too much credit for his twisty b.s.