Inception

I haven't seen this poster before. I don't
care for the title font, it's stupid looking.

"The Dream is Real"

Welcome to the first post of October at The Tagline! As I teased on Saturday, today I will be talking about a movie with Ken Watanabe in it: (albeit as a supporting character) Inception. I had previously avoided reviewing it because I felt like I couldn't get away from people talking about it, but now I think it's okay to share my thoughts. For those of you who did not see Inception (I suppose someone might not have), it's a movie about people who use some manner of made up technology to enter other people's dreams, so that they can... do stuff to them. Typically they're trying to steal information right from the person's mind while they are sleeping. Among them, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is considered one of the best, and is called upon to help a rich businessman (Watanabe) prevent another company from obtaining a complete monopoly over the energy market, by convincing its new CEO that his father's dying wish was to break up the company. They will do this by performing a supposedly impossible feat known as inception: planting an idea in a mark's mind and convincing them that it was their own. Cobb assembles a team of friends and associates to help him perform this monumental and risky mind operation.

This movie confuses me. I'm gonna kill someone.

I've read and heard a lot of indications from various sources that this movie was confusing. That is manifestly untrue as far as I'm concerned. While the premise of Inception is perhaps unusual and complex, it sets out to explain the rules of its world fairly early in the movie. It takes you through the steps of how the game is played. After that, the rest of the movie never breaks the rules of the universe. I've heard people, dumb people and teenagers, refer to this movie as a 'mindfuck'. First of all, for the reasons above, it does not fit that descriptor. Second of all, that is the dumbest thing anyone ever conceived as a type of movie that exists. I estimate in my personal experience that people started calling movies 'mindfucks' the very instant they finished watching Donnie Darko for the first time, and decided that something profound had happened to them. They were in man, they knew the secret now and they would make sure everyone was apprised every time a movie fucked their mind. Not exactly you geniuses, maybe just pay closer attention.

Join the Batman Villain Alumnus Society today, and
Marion Cotillard will shoot you in the face!

Inception is like I said above, an internally consistent movie that explores what I thought was a really interesting science fiction concept. The idea that people can voluntarily put themselves into a dreaming state using a piece of technology, and the implications of that technology existing present a variety of interesting questions, some of which are answered over the course of the movie. There is also the teaser at the end that leaves the ending ambiguous, which at the time drove me nuts but now I can appreciate a bit more. The cast all deliver excellent performances, and you will find them very familiar if you've seen the recent Batman movies, because nearly every single one of them, main or supporting, has appeared in one of the three Chris Nolan Batmans. It might come as no surprise then that Inception was also directed by him. I guess the question we all have to ask is who will Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Paige be in the unexpected 4th installment?

Has anyone seen my role in this movie?

Speaking of Ellen Paige, her character is probably the only one I had a real problem with in this movie. It's not that she didn't deliver a passable performance, she did fine it's just that, there is no real reason for her to be in the movie. It felt like Chris Nolan or someone had promised she could be in the movie, and when they were done casting they were like "shit, but who will Ellen Paige be? Oh I guess she'll be some tag-a-long character who makes up mazes or something." Her character clocks in just below Twilight-grade Mary Sue actually, considering that while she seems to have no real place among Cobb's associates, or in the movie structure, she is apparently super good at everything and everyone likes her, and she's important for some reason that I'm not really sure of.

Among other things that happened in the movie that are ridiculous, there is one particular shot of a van falling (those who have seen the movie will know what I'm talking about) that they cut back to approximately 100 times over the course of the last hour of the movie. I think that maybe it breaks some kind of van falling record.

Spoilers: JGL kills everyone else in a hotel room...no really.

It almost goes without saying, but Inception performed pretty amazingly in the box office. Over the course of its theatrical run it grossed more than 825 million dollars, against a 160 million dollar budget (which they put to pretty good use I'd say, the effects in this movie are stellar). It was also well received by the critical community, proving that on rare occasions movie critics and I can agree about things.

That's all for today folks! Join me on Thursday when I review 21 Jump Street, and Jonah Hill shoots off a guys dick.