Inception (with implanted spoilers)

english guy would have been good if he'd been less annoying

tbh i didnt get the tom hardy thing, he was fine but didnt blow me away or anything. in fact the whole thing where he and jgl were supposed to be the bantering comic relief kind of fell flat for me.

yeah i didn't think it worked that well either. funniest bits in the film for me were jgl waking up while his chair was being tipped.

JGL...huge girly crush. His dance sequence in 500 days of summer was the only thing that kept me from stabbing everyone.

Thinking lots about the buildings & general architecture of the movie. Loved the repeated skyscraper horizon in Cobb's subconscious...almost looked like black paper cutouts.

i still don't get why someone would intentionally want that.

Cuz it looks cool from faraway? Shrug

guys this was enjoyable but also like w/e

This is the kind of "why people liked I movie I didn't" thought that can't help but sound condescending, but I was thinking about a quote Nolan dropped in that Voice interview where he claims he's been baffled for decades by how mirrors reflect light.

"Films are subjective—what you like, what you don't like," he says. "But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up onscreen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there—I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies."

Even if I find the outcome pretty disappointing and middlebrow, I can't deny that this movie was what pretty clearly 100% what HE wanted to do, and few action blockbusters really have that vibe (ok, well I think The A-Team did, but that was never going to be hailed like this is).

haha that kind of obvious directorial passion is also why i can't fully hate either of the boondock saints

Seeing a second viewing of Inception in a few hours time. Really looking forward to it, and it'll be interesting to see how it'll hold up after reading the - loooong - discussions over the merits and flaws of the flick, here and there. Especially as how I came away from the first viewing liking aspects that haven't gone down so well with some - the OHMSS mountain facility shootout, Ellen Paige, who I have previously found a little grating but not here. I thought Leo looked fucking cool as well.

Not enough has been said about Wally Pfister's cinematography though, I think. I love the crisp look of the film. I thought Pfister made a great fist of the night time look in the Dark Knight, but though Inception takes place almost entirely in daytime it looks equally distinctive.

liked it. need to def see it again and give it some time to really sink in and figure it all out.

but GODDAMN too much exposition, and not the "here's what's going on and how things work" kind either (which i like) but THEMATIC exposition like "you have to confront her"

also, is giving yourself the illusion, or lying to yourself i guess, the "big theme" in all of Nolan's films?

ha kind of

feels almost like he wants you to "use your illusion"

Now I kind of want to see a Guns and Roses version of Inception. Although I guess the November Rain video sort of was.

nolanvember rain

I could see Axl beating himself up in a hotel hallway he thinks is spinning around.

thought about this some more, a little, and: still think it's basically the equivalent of a meticulously designed and well thought out ~bong~

i thoroughly enjoyed it, but it's deeply hollow. plus, feel like the most ~human~ part of the film was the suggestion that moll might have been truly mentally ill, which nolan backed off from (she's actually just a casualty of dreaming TOO HARD)

I need to lay off the sleep - I been dreaming too hard

then again, if all "blockbusters" aspire to this kinda of craftsmanship and (as u guys pointed out) singular directorial vision (this was thoroughly nolan's film), i'm all for it.

q my friend had: wouldn't what's-his-name notice he was asleep for a whole 10-hour flight?

i would be so happy if i slept for a flight that long

btw the character's name is Mal

xpost -- you got that right, I would take it as a sign I WAS finally able to sleep on a flight.

w/e

The more I think about it, the more I think Lukas Haas was being lol'ed at with the role he got.

That's for sure.

he was just so happy when the phone rang.

why all the haas hate

Seems like "Leap of Faith" might just be his proudest moment

I heart haas, just - wtf has he been up to?! (besides ugk cameos)

I think he wanted to be in the movie and JGL pulled some strings since they were in Brick together.

why all the haas hate

secret contingent of ILE posters are poorly-spelling Germans

all nolan's movies being centered around protag burying their demons in illusions/delirium OTM! when we left the theater we weren't discussing what the spinning top might have meant or jgl/tom hardy's cute riffing, it was 'man chris nolan is a motherfucker with ISSUES'.

i loved it though btw. the only thing i didn't like about it was leo yelling 'jesus!' after mal jumped.

i know! wtf, that wasn't her name.

is jgl specifically attempting to speak in the lowest register his voice will physically allow in an attempt to make us forget he was the cute little girl on third rock?

will someone tell me if this movie deserved 800 posts and should I see it

not really and yes

I'll prob see it

I've read a slim thug tweet about it so why not

imo the line someone posted above should read 'man chris nolan is a motherfucker with anally retentive ISSUES'.

The head of an architect.

Haven't read this thread yet, but looking forward to it. Just saw the flick today and it blew my mind.

I'm sure people will take exception with this, but my first thought leaving the cinema was that Inception is the Summer Blockbuster version of Last Year at Marienbad.

Pretty sure this was already linked, but
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/a-man-and-his-dream-christopher-nolan-and-inception/

A.
I’ve been looking at some of the Criterion discs. I watched “Last Year at Marienbad” the other night and I’d never seen it.

Q.
You’re making a movie about dreams and you hadn’t seen it?

A.
No, I know. Everyone was accusing me of ripping it off, but I actually never got around to seeing it. Funnily enough, I saw it and I’m like, Oh, wow. There are bits of “Inception” that people are going to think I ripped that straight out of “Last Year at Marienbad.”

Q.
What do you think that means?

A.
Basically, what it means is, I’m ripping off the movies that ripped off “Last Year at Marienbad,” without having seen the original. It’s that much a source of ideas, really, about the relationships between dream and memory and so forth, which is very much what “Inception” deals with. But we have way more explosions.

Oh cool, makes me happy that I'm not the only person who noticed that.

i thought of Solaris.

but comparing hollow Nolan to Tarkovsky is like Speilberg compared to Kubrik.

Two quick things;

People who claim this film is gibberish must've not been paying attention. Like, it may or may not be a great film, but it's totally coherent (there are a few very technical questions that aren't answered, but if you follow the film's logic you can follow what's going on easily). And second, the people who leave this film asking if the top fell or if the whole thing is a dream are about as bad as the people who left Doubt asking whether the priest was really a pedophile. I don't know if Nolan does or doesn't want us to wonder about the top, but it's (at least in my eyes) the least interesting question in the film.