Inception

[Green Lantern]

The final scene was without question, IMO, the finest bit of film making in the movie. I am completely uneducated in film arts, but in my naive mind great film making is more than dialog, more than pretty pictures. It is the expression of ideas or emotion through the combination of moving pictures and dialog or plot or character. When done properly it can provide a gestalt experience, a succinct and efficient joining of emotion and intellect that can be obtained in no other way.

This film did none of that, for me, until that last scene. The ambiguity was wonderful and it makes the point better than all the dialog about the topic throughout the film to that point.

Spoiler for spolier:

The spinning top juxtaposed with dicrapio's reunion with his children elegantly brings the issue of dream versus reality to the surface in a way that nothing else in the film ever did. It was a wonderful ending that rescued the film from itself, IMO.
Btw, falafel, tops will sometimes start of wobbly and then begin to spin true as they continue. but that is the beauty of the scene. It is the beauty of it.

I thought the recurring motif with the children was very well done. We keep waiting and waiting to see their faces. In the final scene (and I'm not using spoiler tags as I figure anyone this deep into the thread who hasn't seen the movie is kind of asking for it) when it finally happens, it was pretty emotional.

[BlueHair]

I'm going to see this today. I've seen two movies at the theater in two years, so this better be good!

[BlueHair]

It was awesome. Best film I've seen in a long time.

[OhioBlue]

I liked it as well. Fun ride. I'd give it an 8.5/10 and would definitely like to see it again.

[fusnik]

I thought it was fun and worth seeing at the IMAX.

I don't get the 'its such a smart and intelligent mind eff' people are talking about. (Not here per say just the people I've spoken to at church, friends we hung with). It wasn't hard to follow what was going on and the different levels.

Few questions:

Leo at the end when he found Saito was an old man, correct? His voice was definitely that of an old person.

Leo's reunion with his kids was a dream, no? His kids didn't age, hair the same, clothes the same. The top went from circling, to a stationary state. And did you notice his totem was not chosen by him, it was taken from his wife in a dream state?

[Katy Lied]

Some questions I have:

1. In the van in the water, everyone is getting out except for the chemist, who looks as if he's just relaxing in the driver's seat. The girl asks about him, worried that he doesnt have any air to breathe. Someone else tells her something, and she swims off. What was that about?

2. How come they didnt all kick it back upstairs when the van hurtled over the freeway barrier and flipped over? They were in freefall then, albeit a very brief period of time.

3. Why didn't leo just kill moll in limbo to bring her back? Why did she have to agree to die?

Comments:

1. Jeez, they couldn't get Ken Watanabe a voice coach? His accent rendered some of his lines unintelligible, and they were key lines.

2. I know leo was in love with marion, and it was his guilty conscience talking, but she was a major drag the entire movie.

3. If I spent 50 years creating my own world, I sure would make it a little more colorful. My sim cities are nice and green.

I really liked some of the ideas in this movie:

1. I liked that leo and his wife were locked in a battle for dominance of who's interpretation of "real" was correct. They were each utterly sure they were correct, but couldn't get the other to budge, and they didn't want to be right without their spouse there with them. To win, Moll was willing to frame her husband for murder, and kill herself. To win, Cobb was willing to go into his wife's mind and commit a brutally invasive inception. I wonder if this is like some couples on CUF, where the wife is utterly convinced of Mormonism (or that God exists) and the husband is utterly convinced that there is no afterlife.

2. I also really liked the three speeds of time, one quickly, one slower, and one eternally slow. I wonder which of those 3 speeds equated to awake time, Nolan clearly thinks our awakening moments are equal to the fastest time dimension.

[jay santos]

Some questions I have:

1. In the van in the water, everyone is getting out except for the chemist, who looks as if he's just relaxing in the driver's seat. The girl asks about him, worried that he doesnt have any air to breathe. Someone else tells her something, and she swims off. What was that about?

2. How come they didnt all kick it back upstairs when the van hurtled over the freeway barrier and flipped over? They were in freefall then, albeit a very brief period of time.

3. Why didn't leo just kill moll in limbo to bring her back? Why did she have to agree to die?

Comments:

1. Jeez, they couldn't get Ken Watanabe a voice coach? His accent rendered some of his lines unintelligible, and they were key lines.

2. I know leo was in love with marion, and it was his guilty conscience talking, but she was a major drag the entire movie.

3. If I spent 50 years creating my own world, I sure would make it a little more colorful. My sim cities are nice and green.

I really liked some of the ideas in this movie:

1. I liked that leo and his wife were locked in a battle for dominance of who's interpretation of "real" was correct. They were each utterly sure they were correct, but couldn't get the other to budge, and they didn't want to be right without their spouse there with them. To win, Moll was willing to frame her husband for murder, and kill herself. To win, Cobb was willing to go into his wife's mind and commit a brutally invasive inception. I wonder if this is like some couples on CUF, where the wife is utterly convinced of Mormonism (or that God exists) and the husband is utterly convinced that there is no afterlife.

2. I also really liked the three speeds of time, one quickly, one slower, and one eternally slow. I wonder which of those 3 speeds equated to awake time, Nolan clearly thinks our awakening moments are equal to the fastest time dimension.

I've thought a lot about this movie. I want to love it so badly but I just didn't.

I like your comment #1 about ideas you liked. I think the movie would have been more interesting if the Cobb/Moll in a dream or not in a dream would have been the main plot instead of a subplot. And we could have used 15 minutes of fight/chase/shoot/explode rather than 50 minutes of it.

[Art Vandelay]

I liked this film, I wouldn't put it on par with Memento (one of the most underrated films of the past 10 years IMO) but quite thought provoking nonetheless. I thought the ending could be one of 3 scenarios.

1) Cobb is back in reality. He spent so much time in a dream state that very little time has passed in the real world. Though suspicious since his kids are in the exact same place wearing the same clothes as when he supposedly last saw them. I do think Nolan purposely (obviously) made the top sound like it was wobbling and starting to slow down.

2) Cobb is dreaming. Which leads to two possibilities the whole movie was just his dream from which he never woke up or his wife is right he can never truly wake up until he is willing to kill himself. Though again this seems unlikely since they supposedly killed themselves on via the train tracks. Perhaps that just brought them back to the next level from "limbo" and he is still in a dream?

3) Cobb was dreaming on the airplane. Much like the dude from Batman he wakes up and sees he has been dreaming about the other passengers but he doesn't really know any of them. Yes they look towards one another, but their is no communication indicating he really knows these people in reality. This scenario falls apart because I don't think Juno could afford a 1st class ticket from Japan to LA, unless her dorky boyfriend invented was cast to play in Arrested Development or something.

[Green Lantern]

For all of you who have seen the film, here is a pretty sweet and in-depth breakdown of the events of the movie by film critic Sam Adams, who writes for both Salon and the AV Club. It may be more than you actually want to read about a single film but I thought it was pretty fascinating: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/m...tion_explainer.

[Art Vandelay]

How freaking good is Christopher Nolan? This guy keeps hitting homerun after homerun. I wish more directors/actors followed the Nolan/Sean Penn/Matt Damon/Ed Norton model- choosing quality over quantity.

[jay santos]

How freaking good is Christopher Nolan? This guy keeps hitting homerun after homerun. I wish more directors/actors followed the Nolan/Sean Penn/Matt Damon/Ed Norton model- choosing quality over quantity.

He's good, but I put him below Tarantino, PT Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and maybe Coen brothers.

[Green Lantern]

He's good, but I put him below Tarantino, PT Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and maybe Coen brothers.

Kaufman's only directed one movie!

[MarkGrace]

Memento is not underrated. It was in the top 10 of pretty much every critic list I saw for the 2000s.

[jay santos]

Kaufman's only directed one movie!

I know, I mean him as a writer. I was excited about his directorial debut Synechdoche NY, but it was kind of a fail.

[Katy Lied]

I know, I mean him as a writer. I was excited about his directorial debut Synechdoche NY, but it was kind of a fail.

I tried so hard to like Synechdoche, but I just couldn't stay awake. I really wanted to like it.