Inception

9.5/10

2010, has been a pretty weak year for film.  Having worked at a movie theater all summer, I sure experienced my fair share of disappointing movies.  From Robin Hood to The Expendables, so many movies over the summer have been flat and uninteresting.  Although, I’m sure as every year starts up, I always say “this is such a weak year.”  And I always have the end-of-year movies to look forward to, since they are usually of a higher quality due to the race for the Oscars.  

That being said, there was still a few good movies over the summer; including Toy Story 3, Valhalla Rising and most notably Inception.

I had been anticipating this movie for a year since the teaser trailer first came out in 2009.  With the exception of Ellen Page, everything about this movie appealed to me:

1. Directed/written by Christopher Nolan (the creative master behind some of my favourite movies: Memento, The Prestige, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight)
2. Amazing cast including my favourites Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Caine.
3. A droning score by Hans Zimmer
4. And it’s about dreams, which movies seem to work well with; since they themselves are visual representations of imaginations. Movies about dreams typically tend to be awesome. [See Eternal Sunshine, Science of Sleep, 8 1/2] 

Along with most others, I was obviously blown away by the movie.  Namely because of the concepts that were introduced and how creative the movie was in terms of plot. Also, there was of course, the awesome ‘hallway fight’ which acts as the tent-pole scene of the film.  

But I also don’t think that it’s ‘the greatest movie ever!’ as most people on internet often believe.  To start off, I enjoy each of the aforementioned Nolan films much more.  Inception doesn’t have the enjoyability factor that these movies have.  Not that they are designed to be funny but even Memento has some fun with it’s story.  And I can obviously take some glee in watching the Joker in The Dark Knight as opposed to the ‘too serious’ heist team in Inception.

  I bought this movie on Blu Ray recently and was worried that the movie wouldn’t hold up.  I thought it wouldn’t be as interesting since I already knew how the concept of inception works, but it was still just as interesting, if not easier to follow.  The main fight scene was still fascinating and awesome.  Especially after watching how they did it in the special features on the disc.  [Side note: there is also an insightful documentary on how dreams work in the extras]

Summary:

Inception is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year and it is definitely re-watchable.  It’s not Nolan’s best, but is definitely worth any viewers time provided they give it their full attention and keep their brain turned on for the first hour.  I rank this film at #61 out of the 1387 movies I’ve seen on my flickchart account.

[flickchart.com is an awesome website I recommend to anyone who loves movies  where you can keep track of all the movies you’ve ever seen and rank them up to create a list of your favourite movies in order]