Inception

[Levin]

Inception

I'm feeling more and more in awe of this film. There is so much to it.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/27...musical-s.html

[Carcass]

Inception

This is an almost transcendentally awful film. Hammy acting. Full of preposterous exposition FROM START TO FINISH (which is two and a half fucking hours - or three weeks if you're on the next level of sleep down or hate brainless action flicks). The most awful editing of a film ever - it's like a trailer that never ends. And I'm sorry, but if you say this is like Philip K Dick, then I'd have to guess you've never read any.

Does anyone here want to stand up for the ********************

***************** risible spinning top final scene?

It was worse than the dog showing up at the end of The Road or the utterly shameful teen angst ending to Synecdoche New York.

I started booing at the end. Something I've never done before.

[Ray de Galles]

Inception

Carcass wrote:

And I'm sorry, but if you say this is like Philip K Dick, then I'd have to guess you've never read any

Well, you'd be wrong. I haven't read any for around twenty years but you don't think there are similarities between the film and 'Ubik', for instance? Note, not that it is "as good as" just that they explore similar themes and structures?

[Incandenza]

Inception

Inception very similar to a 2002 Scrooge McDuck comic.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Inception

I'm pretty in lock-step with Carcass. Not quite as bad as the LotR movies but about 8/10 on the squirm-in-the-seat meter. I had more fun trying read my watch in the dark. Mind you nothing with Ellen Page in it can be a total waste of time.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Inception

My initial reaction was to give it 8/10, but that's probably settled down to a 7 now, and I'm certainly feeling Carcass' rage.

It wasn't particularly mindblowing or head-freaking or thought-provoking (despite being widely built up as such), which was a disappointment. The silver lining is that it was way easier to follow than I'd feared. People like Mark Kermode were all like "Oh my god, if you stop paying attention for ONE SECOND you'll be completely lost", but that's bollocks. Plenty of times I didn't completely 'get' the implications of what was happening, but that was fine cos you could easily pick up the thread again.

I've seen two Nolan films before: Memento and Batman: The Dark Night. I loved Memento and hated Batman, and unfortunately Inception never lives up to its promise to match the psychological ingenuity of the former with the pyrotechnics of the latter. It only keeps one half of that bargain.

Given an almost-unlimited palette to play with, the depiction of dreams was very unimaginitive. I mean, I don't know about you, but my dreams don't often resemble straightforward Hollywood shoot-em-ups. And it's not as if it's the first film to play with dream-space anyway (see Nightmare On Elm Street, Flatliners and a million others).

Also, I found it hard to care about DiCaprio and Cotillard, just as I found it hard to give a shit about DiCaprio and Winslet in Titanic. I suppose they put that stuff in for girls, I dunno.

The more I think about it, the more I dunno why I gave Inception such a high initial score. Maybe just cos the missus took the day off work, her brother was visiting, and I enjoyed the whole experience of the three of us seeing a half-decent film on a drizzly afternoon when everyone else was slaving away so I was in a good mood.

(And Ellen Page is hot.)

We watched the much-lower-budget Men Who Stare At Goats later that evening, and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.

[Ray de Galles]

Inception

Shouldn't you trust your initial opinion of a movie as you walk out of it far better than some analysis reached hours later?

[Spearmint Rhino]

Inception

Harry Truscott wrote:

Shouldn't you trust your initial opinion of a movie as you walk out of it far better than some analysis reached hours later?

Hmm, what's the argument for that?

[Ray de Galles]

Inception

I don't know really. It's pop culture isn't it (not meant in a perjorative way) , how you feel when you've just experienced it is more "true" than when you've spent hours mulling it over.

My un-thought-through argument is a tribute to the very off-the-cuff opinion I am championing, you'll notice.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Inception

Harry Truscott wrote:

I don't know really. It's pop culture isn't it (not meant in a perjorative way) , how you feel when you've just experienced it is more "true" than when you've spent hours mulling it over.

My un-thought-through argument is a tribute to the very off-the-cuff opinion I am championing, you'll notice.

Hah! Well, one thing I'd say is that part of the pleasure of watching a film with a premise like Inception's lies in sitting there wondering which fascinating directions it might take you. When the film ends, that pleasure ebbs away as you slowly realise that, well, it didn't take you in any of those directions after all.

I mean, you know how Memento is a film that instantly makes you want to watch it again, armed with knowledge? Or to watch it backwards? Or to watch a re-cut version in a sequential timeline (or at least, figure out the timeline in your head)? I didn't get that with Inception at all.

Once I'd seen it, I knew I was done with it. I'll never want to watch it again.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Inception

Yes. When the principal function of the cast is as on-screen narrators there's precious little hope of genuine drama or character development. It sort of reminded me of kids playing. "You do this...then I'll do that...I'll shoot him but he won't really be dead...then we'll have a bundle and it'll be alright in the end."

[Lucia Lanigan]

Inception

GT3 only has himself to blame for planting the idea in my head, Inception-style, so here it comes: I thought it was daft and boring. It's just a pretentious James Bond film, isn't it: spending money to make it look like they've spent money, and a near-total absence of intrigue or drama. The plot stuff's all a front for the crash bang wallop shooty smashy stuff.

I didn't find it quite as annoying as Carcass did (although I'm not sure why, cause I agree with his comments) and got carried along for short spells here and there. But mostly I was just thinking about anything less tedious than what was happening on screen. What percentage of the budget would it take for David Lynch to make another film that explores states of consciousness creatively? (Five per cent?) Is Inception, with its talk of "going deeper" and what-not, a sign that Transcendental Meditation is nipping at the heels of Scientology as the quasi-religious cult of choice for Hollywood bigwigs? Did I really save six pounds by bringing my own bottle of water and sandwich instead of buying something at the Ritzy? Yes I did - nice one.

[Tactical Genius]

Inception

Just seen this film. Massively overrated.

As for Ellen Page being hot?
Dudes, she looks about 15.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Inception

Ah yes but she's the thinking man's jailbait.

Seriously though she's just small. Her voice and behavior aren't close to being teenage.

[Tactical Genius]

Inception

Hmmmm, she looks young enough to be my daughter, and i am still young.
To use a financial analogy, she looks like her "endowments" have yet to mature.

[Carcass]

Inception

Your man is blunt but he has a point.

Apologies to Harry. Inception is similar to Philip K Dick but only in the way a Thargg's Future Shock or episode of Red Dwarf concerning time travel is but, yes, point taken.

[Ray de Galles]

Inception

Ah man, I want to read some 'Tharg's Future Shocks' again now.

[Carcass]

Inception

After leaving Sounds and Dr Who Weekly, Alan Moore stretched his muscles writing them for a while I think.

[jason voorhees]

Inception

Nicepiece by Roger Ebert that meanders between Citizen Kane, the nature of best-of lists, the Tomato-Meter, and how Inception fits into all of that.

[Ginger Yellow]

Inception

Well I thought it was a a lot of fun. Utter nonsense, as befits a summre blockbuster, but a lot of fun. I can certainly understand the disappointment though - it would certainly have been a more interesting, better film if it had been made by David Lynch, or someone like Park Chan-Wook or, well, Kurosawa. And it basically was made 10 years ago by David Cronenburg (with a little Eternal Sunshine... added in and the body horror taken out). But given that it was a summer blockbuster, it was more interesting than it had any right to be. And I don't think Harry Truscott was entirely off base with the PK Dick comparison. There were definitely traces of Ubik in the instability of the dream worlds and the decay evident in limbo, not just the overall idea of not knowing what's real and what's not, or if that question has any meaning.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Inception

The other night I went to a talk given by the guy who did all the visual effects for Inception (and who also does Harry Potter, Iron Man and all that kind of stuff). Really quite interesting, hearing him explain how they mapped the streets of Paris using 200,000 separate photographs and a laser-based device that logs the shape and size of buildings to within a couple of millimetres, to get that city-folding-in-on-itself effect.

[evilC]

Inception

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[rick derris]

Inception

saw it last night, wasnt the whole thing stolen from a red dwarf episode?

I am with TG as well, that girl does look about 15

[Ray de Galles]

Inception

[evilC]

Inception

Only just got round to seeing this in its entirety and...

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...You do realise that the entire scenario was, in fact, created by the wife in her mind, so as to bring her husband back to her?

Remember how they said that your 'totem' should never be touched by anyone else? Well, then why did the Di Caprio character always carry a totem that had previously belonged to his wife? Using that, she was able to influence him and his dreams all along.

In the very last scene, where the top was still spinning, I was just waiting for her to appear next to the table, reach out and grasp the top before it toppled. The fact that we never see it fall leaves that possibility in our minds.

Anyway... on balance, far better than I thought it was going to be and more than you can reasonably expect from a Hollywood pulp sci-fi, these days, so it gets two thumbs up from me.

(I also liked the fact that they went straight in at the deep end with the storyline, rather than doing all the biographical 'this is what happened in their past and why they're so fucked up' bullshit at the beginning.)