Inception (with implanted spoilers)

also the events weren't a figment of Leo's imagination -- I still don't get how anybody could think the whole movie was a dream.

nolan is the blockbuster guy that makes people feel like theyre watching something smart.

Honest question -- has he ever made a 'fun' movie to start with?

He's tonally too heavy for "fun," and his thoughts can fit on the head of a pin.

and the thoughts don't dance either.

xpost ahh the ole "other people think the movie is smarter than it actually is so therefore I'm going to take it out on the director" approach.

Also – he can't stage or edit an action scene. He's like Michael Bay with Godard on the brain.

xpost ahh the ole "other people think the movie is smarter than it actually is so therefore I'm going to take it out on the director" approach

Well, it'd be unfair to take it out on his mother.

Also – he can't stage or edit an action scene.

Okay, can't disagree with this more. While I didn't like some of the action scenes in Inception, TDK has some fantastic action sequences.

xpost - no im sure the director thinks its much smarter than it is too. im not saying inception is a film for dummies, he does have cool, interesting, potentially inspiring concepts, he just has no idea of making them less heavy handed. actually, its as though he LIKES making them heavy handed so he can show to everyone just how clever he is. wears its intellectual pretensions on its sleeve a bit too proudly in other words.

I haven't seen Shutter Island but DiCaprio's scrunchy faces can't be as intense as they are in Inception.

Less to do with his face, but in IMAX his head looked like a hot-air balloon. I thought it was a product of the massive screen, but the rest were ok - just dear Leo = blimphead, again.

I thought The Dark Knight was pretty fun despite itself (I also found Memento and The Prestige a lot more amusing than this). And yeah, I don't think Nolan's action scenes are exceptionally incoherent for 2010 blockbusters at all.

"exceptionally incoherent for 2010 blockbusters at all"

blockbusters being too long vs blockbusters that dont like to make sense.

Did you see it? I know a lot of critics just went "Tom Cruise AIYEEE" but I enjoyed watching the guy battle his demons in a psychotic dreamworld.

― da croupier, Tuesday, July 20, 2010 1:50 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

of course i did bro

it was really awful

*shrugs* aside from general antipathy for Cruise (maybe Diaz too), I dunno what beef people would have with it.

it was really some of the worst storytelling i'd seen in a long long while... tho i guess the sort-of psychotic aspect of tom cruise being this grinning psychopathic killer who keeps drugging cameron diaz and dragging her around the world was kind of amusing in a weird way

I thought Cruise was no longer sort-of psychotic.

He's tonally too heavy for "fun," and his thoughts can fit on the head of a pin.

― Would love to hear Bam babble about this (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 1:58 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and the thoughts don't dance either.

― Would love to hear Bam babble about this (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 1:59 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

i was talking about the aspect haha

no they really do paint him as a murderous maniac in that movie... one of those things where he's wrongly accused of [something... stealing a battery i think] and so his fellow agents go after him and he gleefully slaughters them all

the storytelling didn't bother me, didn't seem egregious for an international cloak'n'dagger, Charade-on-steroids thing, and yeah, I thought keeping open the possibility that Tom Cruise is just a psycho freak was pretty great, though it would have been even greater if they'd gotten lead actors people actually want to watch bang. Clooney would have had his biggest hit yet with it.

And as I brought the movie up as being more "fun" than Inception, I'd say the opening airplane battle and landing was more entertaining than anything in Nolan's deal.

i think we can all agree that the bar has been set pretty low this summer

yeah, I mean all the films I'm praising still feel pretty high-B

I don't think Nolan's action scenes are exceptionally incoherent for 2010 blockbusters

That's definitely a new low for faint praise

Scott and Phillips' review is the best example of the cautious middle ground.

I apologize if this already came up, but even if we accept that Ken Watanbe couldn't think of a better way to break up an energy monopoly than hiring a past-prime idea thief who pretty much fucked up his audition, isn't it kinda odd that Cillian Murphy didn't recognize the owner of his father's biggest competitor rolling with the Dream Team? I assume Murphy would keep up with that stuff if he's getting to take over the family business.

it was all a dream dude

I just would think that Steve Jobs' no. 2 would notice if Bill Gates was part of his gun-toting ski squad

haha

the movie might have been cooler if they were less jamesbondy in real life than in dreams... like they are exactly as slick and action-ready in the waking world as they are in the dreams. even the matrix was kind of like this. irl they should have been total incompetent geeks

all wearing fat suits

haha

just found this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jul/20/inception-christopher-nolan-meaning

This is the device that appears to toy with portentous ideas but to no actual effect. If the director's lucky, cinemagoers will discover meaning in his work that he's failed to articulate himself, or, failing that, will kid themselves they have, or, failing that, will pretend they have, for fear of looking stupid. He'll be helped along by movie snobs who welcome films with grand but impenetrable pretensions. In their eyes, such films require the audience to do a bit of work; this enables the cognoscenti to distinguish themselves from luckless lesser mortals.

... or maybe it was just a straightforward summer movie with some intentional ambiguity in it

I love The Matrix but I feel like in many ways it ruined movies forever

This is one of the films where the film reviewers come across as more pretentious than the filmmaker does.

xxxpost -- And how could you argue with this man?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/06/12/david_cox_140x140.jpg

"...or maybe it was just a straightforward summer movie"

its def not that

in fact it wasn't a movie at all

not sure that guys understands what a MacGuffin is.

its def not that

Why isn't it? Can you give me a reason that doesn't contradict your "it wasn't weird enough" complaints?

er you said it was a straightfoward summer movie. it wasnt. straightforward summer movies are things like transformers. this was attempting to be something more.

explain what that means.

Transformers 2 was an incoherent, convoluted mess. "Straightforward" is the LAST word I would use to describe that movie.

You've got a shit-ton of baggage if you think this movie was trying to be anything more than entertaining.

disagreed. Christopher Nolan was clearly trying to mobilize the government to take pre-emptive measures against dream terrorism.

anything that tries to be more than SLAM BANG POW action strung along by nothing but cliché is totally pretentious wank that should be left to Lynch/Kelly/The Fountain imo

I mean, if you want to talk about movies that are "attempting to be something more", go to the horror thread and talk about "A Serbian Film".

i'm not sure baggage enters into this

baggage and ilxor often tend to go hand in hand IMO

Transformers 2 was an incoherent, convoluted mess. "Straightforward" is the LAST word I would use to describe that movie.

You've got a shit-ton of baggage if you think this movie was trying to be anything more than entertaining.

talking about the first transformers. but you sound like one of those people who say things like 'bah its only entertainment! stop reading so much into it'.

Wait, so what did you read into the first Transformers, then?