Inception (with implanted spoilers)

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?

The first Transformers was ALSO a very straightforward movie. you don't have to be a family-pandering action movie to be straightforward!

I also note that instead of actually talking about how "Inception" isn't straightforward, you're just throwing your hands up in the air. Which basically is about what I expected; you didn't like the movie because it wasn't what you wanted it to be, and now you are bending over backwards attempting to ascribe intentions and motives to it that it didn't fulfill for you that may not have even been part of the movie's intent.

"I wanted it to be THIS and it wasn't" is a very different (and defensible!) criticism from "The movie tried to do THIS and failed" (which can be defensible but actually requires more work than lazy disdain and incomplete arguments).

I mean, I agree that the movie wasn't very deep, but I don't think it was trying to be. This is pretty common in most of Nolan's work (at least in the movies I've seen); he takes an off-kilter premise and then tells a pretty simple, easy-to-follow story within its framework.

first Transformers was an allegory for the Desposyni

Nolan says in that Voice interview that, following his success, he feels "a massive responsibility to do something that you genuinely feel to be meaningful," which sounds like he wants it to be a LITTLE more than just "entertaining," though yeah, I think his main goal was to make people go "oooh, a puzzle!"

my problem is that none of the human drama stuff is credible or about life as it is lived. this is not in general a problem in lots of movies, but it's clear that the people came after the premise. and in this case it's a total failure. there is no character development. who gives a shit about imaginary problems due to mental illness induced by an imaginary technology? and his goal is to accept he was right and successfully move house?

anyway, you're left with an action film about a technological idea and the entire weight of the film is on the audience finding (what nolan does with) the premise interesting per se. so yes, exploring dreams is more than just a macguffin, but not in a good way.

puzzle movies = buy yourself a killer sudoku book and get tae fuck.

his is pretty common in most of Nolan's work (at least in the movies I've seen); he takes an off-kilter premise and then tells a pretty simple, easy-to-follow story within its framework.

ehhh I don't know: TDK had lots of psychobabble put in the mouth of Heath Ledger about good and eeee-vil, and that's not counting the way he shot, lit, and edited him so that he gets maximum time to impress the audience with it. The first Burton Batman had drivel in its script too, but it was faster and sillier.

my problem is that none of the human drama stuff is credible or about life as it is lived.

Good point. Also I must comment that humans vary rarely get upset that the father of their unborn son is killed after traveling in time by a machine, so let's throw out Terminator too while we're at it.

yeah but that movie had AWESOME action sequences

Terminator is a successful action film, which is something no one afaict is claiming for this movie.