Inception (with implanted spoilers)

It is! It's from the rjdj team and is a pretty good prepackaged version of their technology.

My problem with the movie: you cast Scrunchy, JGL, and Tom Hardy as members of a gang yet give them not a single bit of memorable dialogue, not a single moment that distinguishes them. JGL could have been Hardy, Hardy could have been Ellen Page. I'll say this for Scrunchy though: he's ponderous in almost any movie in which he has to solve some kind of mystery.

dunno if you've seen it Dr Morbius but the funny bits are rubbish

Oh, Scrunchy. I was joking with a friend a couple nights ago that I finally watched Shutter Island and Scrunchy's Bostonian accent was even sillier than in The Departed. Having more experience with Boston, he made the point it was probably more accurate, as Boston accents sound fake in person, too.

JGL tricks ariadne into kissing him at one point, tom hardy kicks JGL chair from beneath him at one point, the sedative guy says "did you see that??" to a van full of sedated people at one point. can't remember any others. ken watanabe reveals he's bought the airline at one point but I don't know if that's supposed to be funny. probably there are lots of other bits that are supposed to be funny and to which you're supposed to go ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ha-ha but I've forgotten them now.

the draw me a maze in one minute that takes two minutes to solve stuff on the roof was pretty lol tho

Nolan's shit at jokes. I still like this film, I have a soft spot for ludicrous sci-fi that takes itself really seriously.

I like ludicrous sci-fi that plays like Saturday matinee stuff (eg Fantastic Voyage, vastly simpler and far more entertaining)

I have a soft spot for ludicrous sci-fi that takes itself really seriously.

― A brownish area with points (chap), Monday, January 10, 2011 7:14 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, see, i do too. but only when it has some sense of grand, visionary imagination. or at least some cool ideas about what can be done with its basic concept. this was just long, plodding, narratively awkward and dull as dirt. it's hard to believe that one could create a less imaginative & wonder-inducing movie set in the world of dreams. just pointless fuddling complication on top of relentlessly overexplained complication, and that hardly = interesting sci-fi world building. only moments i genuinely enjoyed were those so heavily featured in the commercials, when leo was giving the architect (yeah, lol) the grand tour: the city curling up on itself and all that guff.

Can we get off the banality of the dreams? Dreams are a red herring in this movie, you lot of undergrads.

really enjoyed this on first watch in the theater. was bored to death by it second watch at home. guess a movie that's fashioned together like a puzzle and spends most of its time explaining rules is pretty boring once you've got the puzzle and know the rules.

i haven't seen Memento or Following more than once, but i gather i'd feel the same way.

Can we get off the banality of the dreams? Dreams are a red herring in this movie, you lot of undergrads.

― nomar little (Leee), Monday, January 10, 2011 4:16 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

okay, but they're a boring herring. and the herring underneath is even more boring. did like the visit to the old corroded city of love lost on the shores of untime or whatever. forgot about that.

all the IDEAS!! stuff in this movie is a red herring. it's an action movie that uses a really complex structure to make up for all the action being bland and unfunny. that basically worked, when i saw it. doubt i'll see it again because i doubt it would work again and also because (personal problem) i am a little hostile to the whole concept of SHARPER IMAGE: THE MOVIE.

i was pretty fascinated with the whole structure and the way the action scenes at various levels played off each other, and the movie just looked dope as hell imo.

otmar

Ha! That's like me saying Touchdown here is not very intelligent because I beat him three games out of five the last time we played chess.

i am a little hostile to the whole concept of SHARPER IMAGE: THE MOVIE.

quoted for truth fucking bomb

the most memorable thing for me maybe was how incredibly tense the third act is - was on the edge of my seat the entire time, for a guy who gets a rap for not really caring about characters & emotions (kinda true) he really knows how to get you invested in the fates of his characters

alfred, the movie's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma, don't you get it?

princess otmotm, third act was pretty amazing imo, moreso than the first two.

imo ITT there's people who r right and people who didn't like Inception

You forgot about people who liked Inception.

http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/strikeout.jpg

i was pretty fascinated with the whole structure and the way the action scenes at various levels played off each other, and the movie just looked dope as hell imo.

― omar little, Monday, January 10, 2011 5:03 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

see, i agree that this was a cool idea, but it didn't really work for me. like, the truck hits the railing and has, what? two or three seconds until it hits the water and wakes everyone up, right? can't be more than that. 32 fps/ps, and there's no way it was more than 200 feet up in the air. closer to 100, but whatever. okay, so they've got three seconds. one dream level down, that's a minute. two dream levels down, it's 20 minutes. okay, but most of that time two levels down is just thrown away, so that we're left watching the last couple minutes of level two time play out against the single minute of level one time. there's no sense of the difference in scale. one's just in dumb zero-g slo-mo while the other isn't. and why not? why weren't those two levels in feeling the effects of the fall in some way? we can make up reasons that might seem satisfying, but there's no real logic to any of it. i had the sense that the script was just making up details as it went along, like a child telling a story, with no sense of narrative form.

did like the idea of the asian businessman having to wait out his whole damn life in dreamland for the reappearance of some mysterious wierdo he barely remembers. that should have been the emotional focus and crux, imo, but the movie was trying to do too many other things to give that scene sufficient weight.

The sad I think there was probably a halfway decent film in if not for DiCaprio, Nolan's insistence on explaining every second of dumbspace, there basically being too many boring not doing anything characters altogether and the central intrigues being so dull. Actually I guess that's a lot to overcome, but the central idea seemed interesting enough that in more competent (maybe competence isn't the problem, but I'm not entirely sure what Nolan's deal is so) hands I could have been very interested. I guess I'd like most to see the La Jetee to Inception's 12 Monkeys.

I don't know why everyone thinks it was super-dumbed down when half of the viewing public still only grasped half of what was going on. I guess the law of averages applies, right?

i think the idea isnt that it was too easy to understand, just that it was overexplained and inelegant - more a style issue than a concept one

i didnt understand everything that happened but idk im prob dumb

"when half of the viewing public still only grasped half of what was going on"

Maybe cuz they fell asleep during the extended explanations!

No, I mean people of average intelligence who are casual/regular moviegoers to major theaters didn't understand the compressed time thing completely, or really didn't get the intro / outro connection or why his wife was after him.

I have only run across one or two of these people, mostly in bars, so maybe they're alcoholics?

So not understanding Inception drove them to drink?

got drunk cuz they knew they couldn't post to ilx about it

Guys this is so nerdy but I want to make a "fan knitting pattern" of the hats they are wearing in the arctic dreamland.

i was pretty fascinated with the whole structure and the way the action scenes at various levels played off each other, and the movie just looked dope as hell imo.

― omar little, Monday, January 10, 2011 7:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

princess omar otm itt

the first time i saw this i was kinda like pssh this looked nice and was well made but the plot isn't the easiest and i'm not totally on top of everything that happens. weirdly, knowing all the plot the second time made it much easier to enjoy the structure and the tension (it's still tense even if you know what happens!) and the little visual details and polish. i suppose a great movie would've been more enjoyable the first time, but i almost think that nolan intended this for repeat viewing. that might not be a virtue, but w/e

the movie just looked dope as hell

why do you think they call it dope?

Morbius, please, I haven't smoked weed since 2000 and I find your reference to drugs frankly rather offensive. http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2889/emotcolbert.gif

dude omar i think he was asking an honest question. why ~do~ they call it dope? what is dope, anyway??

dopamine, as in not yours, typically extracted from bauxite

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LbrWNsWcGmI/0.jpg

http://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/mo/images/american_stone_trade/mo_st_louis_glue_co_10-1927_ad.jpg

Its hobby glue, duh!

yeah, it hurt me real bad to type that

xp

supposedly derives from the smoking of opium tar, as "doop" apparently used to refer to thick liquids and sauces

In this way you can overcome all of the so-called "Dope Troubles."

I guess I'd like most to see the La Jetee to Inception's 12 Monkeys.

i'm no La Jetee fanboy but this is inspired.

Hell I'd just like to see Gilliam's Inception.

I'd like Inception to have been made in the mid 60s as a slick and swinging TV series starring Patrick McGoohan and Robert Vaughn.

Maybe Michael Horden in the Caine role.

im probably one of the few who enjoyed this a lot MORE the second time. some things I noticed that have probably been noted upthread 100 times already:

1) there seems to be a LOT of hints that the movie is really about Leo's dream and that HE's the one being incepted. Caine saying "come back to reality," all the talk of catharsis, etc.

2) all the psychotherapy as action movie tropes--uncovering your unconscious as if getting into an impenetrable fortress and pulling off a heist, all in the name of catharsis or some kind of therapy.

3) and since I bought into 2 above, I actually bought into the emotional arc of the movie a lot more.

oh, and Inception being code for the psychoanalytic idea that the patient can't be led by the nose to their own realization, that they sorta have to feel it as their own.

3) and since I bought into 2 above, I actually bought into the emotional arc of the movie a lot more.

I found this to be the case.

although I think it had more to do with not having to keep up with the mechanics.