Inception

[Skaila]

The director who gave us Memento, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, is now giving us Inception. A brilliantly made movie about dreams and heists.

Dominic Cobb is an extractor. He goes into a person's dream (together with a team) and steals their secrets. Every team member has a specific role. The "architect" designs the dreamworld, "forgers" assume the identity of someone else inside the dream, "point men" are the people who monitor the dream and of course the "subject" is the poor fellow whose secrets are being stolen.

Cobb's latest heist goes awry and soon the subject (whose mind he was infiltrating) finds him. He offers him the job of going inside someone's dreams for him. Not to steal secrets, but to plant an idea. The idea would lead the subject to divide his father's empire and thus not creating an energy monopoly.

Of course, the act of 'inception' is not an easy one, so Cobb assembles a team. However, his past complicates things.

I went to see this movie a couple of days ago with Ehlyah. When I first went in all i knew was 'Leonardo DiCaprio' (and no, I wasn't a fan) and that it was something with things.... moving. Ok I had no clue what the plot was.

Gladly, they explained it all in a very clear tone, seeing I'm rather slow on the uptake Still, with the plot, you need to keep up or you get lost. This isn't a simple action flick, nor a simple heist movie. It's so much more.

The movie is beautifully made and the music is once again top notch. The ending, oh God, the ending. I loved the ending and hated it. But it's so well done, that you'll forgive Nolan. I did anyway >.> Kind of... after long debate...

The cast was great. Leonardo DiCaprio as the protagonist was surprising, to me. I remember him as the silly boy in Growing Pains, or Jack Dawson in Titanic. Sure I had seen Catch Me If You Can and The Aviator, but still... an action movie? Shooting guns and being badass, I don't know. But he performed well.

Another one I was quite afraid of was Joseph Gordon-Levitt... And he surprised me the most and I loved his performance the most. He can go quite far if he keeps it up.

The other actors are top notch as well, but mentioning them all can get tedious.

Now for those who have seen the movie, and please only click this if you have seen the movie or it'll spoil it:

This is explains the levels of inception, more or less.

I really have to be careful about the pictures I show and what I say. If you have watched this movie, don't spoil it for anyone. It's a great ride.

And as such, i give this a 6/6

[Chevalier Bayard]

Thanks to have started this topic Skaila! It was supposed to be started already but I'm sure one among the staff will be also very grateful

To get back to Inception, we've been to watch it last Friday night with Liewen, absinthe, Ithil, Rottweiler, Blunt and Starsky (and we didn't manage to bring with us Mindtrust and his bride who preferred to enjoy Parisian Happy Hours ).

As we got out of the movie theater around midnight we didn't really get the opportunity to discuss about it but obviously we all loved it. I've not been that convinced about the music though. I found it efficient in the movie but doubt it can stand on its own on your hi-fi. But sure the movie is great and I like the different readings you can have about the story and I want to see it again to analyze it more carefully next time cause I'm not really agreeing about the grid given in spoilers.

DO NOT READ IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET!!!

I was very troubled by the fact the images we see when Cobb retrieves his children are exactly the ones of his memories. I'm quite sure they're exactly the same images. Even if they're not, the children are exactly the same ones. At their young age they change fast physically speaking and even if there are no precisions at all regarding the delay between Miss Cobb's death and the beginning of the movie, some time have obviously passed so the children should have aged!

When he meets his wife in the limbos, he doesn't want to see his children's face as he is convinced it won't be the real ones but the fruit of his or another dreamer's imagination and therefore not the reality. When he sees them at the end he is convinced to be in the reality and so watch them ... OR ... he decides he doesn't care. He lets the toupee turning and doesn't care it it is going to fall or not because he wants to find back his children, whatever they are the real ones or projections, he accepts this as the reality. And as he accepts this as a reality I'm convinced the toupee will fall anyway. I think Mall had found that the toupee was only efficient if you expected it would work and that's why she doubt about ever having returned to reality. As it is much explained the you can play with physics in the dream but if you can curve a city, why won't you be able to make a toupee fall if you wanted it to ?

Even if the movie ends in the reality, another thing troubles me: I'm not sure about the real goal of the mission: is it to incept Fischer in disbanding his heritage ? or is it to incept Cobb in accepting that his wife is gone ? Ariane's role is really not clear in this. She is obviously more focused on the second mission than on the first one and she is designated by the grand-father of the children. I've not understood if Miles was Cobb's father or Mall's one (any idea ?). Whatever he is obviously someone very close to Cobb, someone who wants him to recover from this tragedy.

What do you think ?

Arrgh ! I do need to see it again !!

mmmm... and 5/6 for me !! GO SEE IT !!

[Mindtrust]

After reading this I might book a ticket for this weekend sorry that we hit the bars instead, but I think our happy hour was as good as the movie
Thanks for the review and don't forget about these two movies from Leo, Blood Diamond &The Departed he is rather good in them (IMHO).

[Rawhide]

I must say that I thought the concept was bad and had planned on missing this one. So far, everyone I know who has seen it has raved about it. Might just have to see it anyway.

[Mindtrust]

I saw it last night and I really liked it, I hate writing reviews so here is my score 5/6 well worth seeing

[JackSlater]

I put 3/6 some weeks ago but the more I think of it the more I think it deserve 2/6.
Really this was first of all boring, the first hour of the movie is here to prepare for the inception except that it is useless. I

If you die in a dream you wake up, but finally it makes you go to the lymb
You can change your environment, there is only little paradoxe
you can dream your weapon bigger, it would have been useful to have rocket launch in the third level

Nolan doesn't use the potential of his subject : the dream. Okay, the fist level has to make us believe that we are in the reality, okay but what hapenned to second and third level ? except of good fight in apesantor, we are like in the real world.
It cost 200m$ ? Are you kidding ? Hellboy 2 was far more generous with 125m$ less....

And the true inception of the film

in my opinion hasn't been made to Fisher or Cobb but to the spector. At the end, we are not in a dream (Cobb has no ring, he sees the face of his kid) but he made an inception to the audience by making him believe that this is a dream.)

[coolfrog]

i liked this movie alot because i have even seen it in the cinemas and when the movie ended all people around me were excited about it and that never happenend before lol, i think it was great though this movie was a bit hard to follow but i like that too because you have to stay in the movie to know what they are talking about so its a 6/6 from me

[Nau of Sands]

Hollywood scenarists definitely need an update, coz I can see an several movies dealing with limbos (The Others, Lovely Bones, Inception), but the Vatican has decided in 2007 that the limbos do not exist.

I remember this news made me laugh when I fisrt read it, I figured old guys in Vatican city arguing the question and eventually deciding that no, limbos were not a good idea after all.

Could make a great scenario though, imagine the fate of all those poor souls trapped in limbos for centuries and then suddenly in 2007 obliged to move another place without even be consulted on the subject, does the Vatican compensated their prejudice ? gave them alternative housing opportunities ? Why fantasy/horror movies fans haven't been consulted either ?

[Nau of Sands]

I really liked the movie, put a 5.

Virtuoso in the cutting/editing, I had the feeling that this story that could have over-complicated or foggy is told very clear, and things even clarify themselves when rules seem to change. Chris Nolan plays with the topic of his movie that seems to vary with time. Like in his Batmanish Dark Knight, he set a kind of film noir mood in all of this, action sequences are OK and integrated to the plot.

The flaws are maybe that it is a bit talkative, and that some dream sequences are quite over-normal for dream worlds, I was expecting more after the introduction to the dream rules to the young architect, I had the feeling that it was going to be visually demential, but it remains quite sober. But the end is great. And at last we are spared the kitsch like in Lovely Bones.

The other flaw might be the lack of emotion, it is a designer/architect movie, not that much a really psychological one. I guess there is a "metaphor of cinema" as well as a possible reading, the subject seems to be ready-made for this kind of stuff.

Christopher Nolan would be great at pure science-fiction things.

[Nau of Sands]

I've not been that convinced about the music though. I found it efficient in the movie but doubt it can stand on its own on your hi-fi.

Quite liked this score, no idea on how it sounds without the movie. I ve read that the structure of it is totally based on "Je ne regrette rien" and that is very very very sophisticated, with harmonics tricks, modifications of pulse so on... But Chris Nolan didn t gave the script to H. Zimmer and "stole" the beta-soundtracks to do his own editing, hence the "repetitiveness" which is not a Zimmer style thing.

When Marion Cotillard was casted, Chris Nolan asked H. Zimmer to change the song since it could sound like an easy wink to the movie about Piaf, but Zimmer told him that it would be too complicated and he would have to rewrite everything, so they keplt it.

Very well matched the film to me