Movie review: friggen’ awesome.
One of the good things about this part of Utah is that the theaters are cheap. So when today I found myself near one showing “Inception” for $4.50, I stopped in and watched it. Holy crap! An actually intelligent movie!
I’ll not dealve into the plot, as that can be found described elsewhere. I’ll just say that “Inception” assumes a technology that allows people to share dreams… and sometimes to go into a dream while already in a dream. A neat feature is that in a dream, you apparently think about 20 times faster than reality… three minutes worth of dreaming seems like an hour. And if you go into a dream while already in a dream, it’s 20 times faster still. And so on the further you go…
The result is that there are multiple layers of time rates in the movie, which was clearly confusing to the teenybopper girls sitting in the row ahead of me, but which I thought was neater’n hell. While there have been some justifiable comparisons to “The Matrix,” in that time is spent in fantasy worlds where the laws of physics are not quite fixed, “Inception” is not an action flick. There are a few extended dream sequences in zero gravity. These, to my mind, were the best and most effective zero-g scenes since “Apollo 13.”
If you step out of the theater for five minutes to take a leak or buy some corn… rest assured that you’ll probably be confused as hell when you try to pick up the plot when you get back. A lot happens in this movie… and for once the movie makers do not assume that the viewers are morons.
NOTE: Leonardo DiCaprio used to irritate the hell out of me (why? I assure you it had nothign to do woith him being a prettyboy who makes me look like a toad in comparison). This began to change with “The Aviator,” where he did an effective job as Howard Hughes. In “Inception,” he’s enterred the ranks of the non-irritating actors.
Secondary movie review: saw “Predators” a few days back. An entertaining bit of fluff, comparatively. IMO, the best of the Predator movies since the first one, which it is a lot like. And here again, the actor Adrian Brody goes from “scrawny nerdy goofball” to “effective action-movie badass,” much to my considerable surprise.
11 Responses to “Inception”
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So I take it then that Ellen Page was not so annoying in this film, eh?
I’ll have to check it out.
I’ve found that time compression in dreams is a very real occurrence.
I’ve had dreams in under an hour’s time that seemed to cover many hours in dream time.
I agree with you about DiCaprio, he did a very good job in The Aviator, but the really astounding one was Kate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn.
She had a real advantage though; I was watching “The Life Aquatic”, and she sounds like Hepburn in that also.
Regarding the teeny-bopper girls, one of my favorite stories was about the Rolling Stone reporter who was in a music store and saw the baffled teenage girls looking through the bin of old LP’s: “Look! I didn’t know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings!” 😀
The writer must have read “The Wheel of Time” series.
“In “Inception,” he’s enterred the ranks of the non-irritating actors.”
Doubtless he’ll be relieved to hear it 🙂
My alternate ending for “Titanic”.
DeCaprio and Winslet are floating around on a piece of wreckage, and realize that it can’t support both of them.
DeCaprio takes out his lucky coin and tosses it, stating that whoever wins stays on the wreckage, and the loser goes into the sea.
He asks Winslet to chose which side is her’s.
Winslet loses, and goes into the sea.
Cut to the present present day…DeCaprio is selling the huge diamond for over a million dollars at auction.
As he walks away, he takes two coins out of his pocket …one with two heads, one with two tails…and shows he is a master at shifting them in his hand before displaying them.
Cut back to the sinking; DeCaprio ties Winslet’s body to the piece of wreckage… it may be a long time before rescue, and the cold water will keep her body fresh and edible.
All the girls I worked with out at Jamestown Airport were crying their eyes out about how romantic “Titanic” was; to say that my alternate ending did not meet with their favor is like saying that Whoopi Goldberg would not be a big hit at a KKK rally.
“Why would you _say_ something like that?!”
The pure horror of “Titanic” is that Winslet is a very good actress; check out “Heavenly Creatures” sometime (the same can be said for Sigourney Weaver in “Avatar”…she’s not A-list, but she’s not _that_ bad.)
But the script and its writing for “Titanic” sucked, and if you ever want to know just _how much_ it sucked, just listen to the audio of the movie sometime without looking at the TV screen.
Puke City.
“The writer must have read “The Wheel of Time” series.”
I think this story predates that; it was out of the late eighties.
“Catch Me if You Can” was another fine effort by Lenny, not to mention “The Departed”. Of course everyone except Nicholson is fabulous in that movie, especially Marky Mark and Matt Damon (“MATT DAMON.”)
re: Sir Paul and Wings, about 20 years ago a young employee asked me in all seriousness, “What did John Glenn do before he was a Senator?” Cue the Warner Bros. jaw-dropping SFX.
Well once upon a time, he flew out to Floyd Bennett Field just so he could be on “Name That Tune . . .”
I loved Inception, the story was original and Leo was awesome in it! I have to watch it again to make sure everything sinks in! 🙂
Fairly good. My one complaint is that the excuse for the act of inception was incredibly slim. The dreamworld stuff was fascinating, and the parts of the plot that were about the act of inception and what was going on in Cobb’s dreamworld were fascinating (trying not to write too many spoilers here). But, “I want you to perform this incredibly dangerous, not likely to work task in order to keep a corporate monopoly from forming”? Really?
I considered the acting was stiff, and also the visuals have been a bit bleak. The movie flick is way as well extensive, and it can be no Matrix which is for sure. I understood the principle and all, nonetheless it was a tad as well extensive winded for my taste. I thought Ellen Site was excellent. Would I suggest this film? No! Save it for a rental. It is as being a Vanilla Sky meets the Matrix with much less spectacular visuals. Also, you have to be a thinker. If you are not…definitely skip this one particular. 8 most people walked out of your showing we went to. I wouldn’t check out it yet again!
What was the symbolism of the spinning top?