Inception

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I went and saw Inception, and was blown away.

 

Total mind-fuck was achieved, this is a better mind-fuck then the original Matrix.

 

Great acting, great plot, great everything, fucking epic.

 

I also normally hate DiCaprio, but I'll give him props for this movie.

[Ataraxis]

I might have to go see this next weekend since I keep hearing it's pretty good and thought it looked neat. Or maybe I'll be weird and see it on a weekday. Or maybe I'll pull a me and not see it at all.

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

My boy texted me earlier, probably in the theatre, saying it was "brill."

[Griffon]

"brill" huh? That's a new one to me.

 

I work at a movie theater running the projectors, so I got the chance to see it a bit before the midnight release, and my god did I love it. Christopher Nolan has proven to me that he is the master of the complex storyline. His storytelling skills allow him to play out some of the most complex stories I have seen in movies, without them getting confusing. That's pretty impressive.

Edited July 19, 2010 by Griffon

[Magnus]

How much of a mindfuck would you rate this versus Paprika?

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Never saw Paprika, but I'm not huge on animated movies.

[Lenin]

Saw this last Sunday. I was happy with the choice. Not blown away, but definitely happy. First time I haven't felt even a little bit ripped off as I left the theatre since the The Dark Knight.

 

The plot was good, the acting was good. I think it really only suffered from what I perceived as the film makers trying too hard to make it difficult to follow at certain points, and their overly-linear interpretation of dream-state. Good movie. 8/10.

[Mom]

Fuck this movie, it's like trying to find the endpoint of a circle.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Did you try watching it on a mac or something?

[Rachis]

Great movie! Probably one of the better movies I've seen ever really.

 

And I think it's called making a movie that forces you to pay attention. If a movie is gonna portray a story that is interesting then what exactly is the point of making a movie that you don't have to think about? The flow of the movie wasn't anything but smooth and every point in the story where they entered another point in the dream state was necessary to give you a feel for how much time everyone had and the importance of everyone doing exactly what they needed to on time. If it didn't bother you then it showed what was explained earlier in the movie.

 

Either way DiCaprio movies are really awesome or really terrible and nothing about this movie can be described with terrible. It's really hard for me to say that about any number of movies.

Edited July 30, 2010 by Wrenchis

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I wanna go see this trippin on shrooms, that would be fucking intense.

[Gay Uncle]

I'm not particularly wowed by this movie. The only thing that moved me at all in the entire film was the story of how Mal came to tragically take her own life, and that's mostly because I was in the cinema with my girlfriend who I feel very strongly for, and I tried putting myself in Cobb's shoes. That said, I can't help but think that if I was single I wouldn't have cared too greatly for this either.

 

The movie is numb. Props to the writers for keeping things in synch, but to be honest I found myself correctly predicting the outcomes of a lot of the movie. That kind of killed it for me. I appreciate the movie for not being bad, but I don't think it's particularly amazing all the same.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

The acting was the best part of the film. Very strong performances all around, and the costume/set designs were very nice as well. The cinematography wasn't particularly impressive, but decent.

 

As for content, yeah like you said it was predictable even down to the final smash cut of the film. As far as it being trippy...the 'mind-fuck' part was just the Uchiha battle (from the Naruto manga) except longer, so it didn't blow my mind in the least. I enjoyed that the story stayed tight the entire time, although I was a little annoyed with a few things...in particular, I felt like they left key information out in an attempt to cover up plotholes. The writing was so sturdy the rest of the time though that it didn't bother me enough to kill the movie for me.

 

IMO, it was a good film, but ultimately forgettable.

Edited August 5, 2010 by Colon Mokto

[Rachis]

It's Hollywood. That's why you predicted outcomes.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Eywa has heard you!

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

If everyone could just chip in five bucks for gas, no rush.

[Gay Uncle]

I went and saw this movie again since myself and the girl had nothing better to do, and she works at the cinema. I have to admit that I thought this movie was better the second time around. I attribute this to the fact that I knew the story, knew how it all sort of worked and hence I wasn't shit-scared about missing something like I was the first time I saw it. This let me explore the concepts of the movie in my mind more, an appreciate the plot on a deeper level. In short, I understood this movie relatively easily the first time, but now I have it completely figured.

 

Also, the spinning top falls at the end.

[wantfastcars]

I'll poke my head up for the first time in months to share my two cents on this.

 

The top at the end. There are arguments both for and against it falling. The argument for it falling is simple enough: the top is wobbling, and very clearly appears to be falling over. HOWEVER. Two arguments for that it is still the dream world: 1. The top is stationary, unlike how it circles when he's not in the dream world. It simply sits there and wobbles. 2. Though he has supposedly been gone for years, his children ARE THE SAME AGE and DOING THE SAME THING that they were in his memories of them, thus drawing many people to the conclusion that Mal did not in fact take her own life, and is actually in the real world, (where she may have killed her self due to constantly believing she's in a dream state). I personally support the "it doesn't fall/still a dream" theory, giving the movie a much sadder ending. Well, that's my two cents.

 

Fuck you all and peace.

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

Man fuck you. I can tell when I'm being hustled and this guy has fingers coming out of his mouth.

[Gay Uncle]

I figured that the top falls, since Mal probably would have woken Cobb up if she'd died and entered the 'real world'. I doubt she'd go on killing herself without attempting to 'kick' Cobb first.

[ch00beh]

it was ok. the best part was the hallway fight since that wasn't done with CG. and the effects in general. otherwise nolan needs a better screenwriter than himself and a better editor so that scenes don't feel choppy like in the dark knight. (dark knight had a better script tho. i think it might have to do with the presence of his bro)

 

like i'm not saying the writing was terrible, and i'd totally support that it has a better script than basically every other hollywood movie on the market now, but that's really not saying much.

 

maybe i have to go deeper.

[11MWK11]

I couldn't stand how smug the characters were.

[The Talentless]

:Cillian Murphy takes pin wheel from safe:

:Jackson cries:

[Tsuranga]

Tried watching it at work... found it too pretentious and stopped paying attention.

the way they totally ignored the physics of dreaming got on my nerves.

[LS]

I'll poke my head up for the first time in months to share my two cents on this.

 

The top at the end. There are arguments both for and against it falling. The argument for it falling is simple enough: the top is wobbling, and very clearly appears to be falling over. HOWEVER. Two arguments for that it is still the dream world: 1. The top is stationary, unlike how it circles when he's not in the dream world. It simply sits there and wobbles. 2. Though he has supposedly been gone for years, his children ARE THE SAME AGE and DOING THE SAME THING that they were in his memories of them, thus drawing many people to the conclusion that Mal did not in fact take her own life, and is actually in the real world, (where she may have killed her self due to constantly believing she's in a dream state). I personally support the "it doesn't fall/still a dream" theory, giving the movie a much sadder ending. Well, that's my two cents.

 

Fuck you all and peace.

If the top doesn't stop spinning, that doesn't mean that Mal was right. There is absolutely no way, thematically and in terms of the mechanics of the story, that Mal was right. That's what this film is about: the power of ideas, even incorrect ideas. It is not about questioning the nature of reality, which is one of the reasons it pisses me off when people compare it to The Matrix. Mal is uniformly presented as being batshit insane on the subject of reality; there's never the slightest intimation, from any other character or from the film itself, that she even has a chance of being right. The whole point is that she's gone nuts, has lost touch with reality because of her obsession with finding it, because of what Cobb did to her. Quite apart from that being thematically stupid, it also makes no sense in terms of the story, because if Mal was right then the entire film has been a dream, and there would be no reason for the top to ever work properly. Why would its behavior on the same dreamplane suddenly change at the end of the film, when it's fallen over on this same level throughout the entire film? The top either works or it doesn't. If for some reason you want to operate under the assumption that Mal is right, the top cannot indicate that, and neither can anything else in the story; Mal's failure to kick Cobb, and the fact that this would have ruined the film, are the most indication that we get, and they both indicate that Mal was wrong. The only way it makes sense for the top to keep spinning is if Cobb is still asleep on the plane from the mission, which actually is hinted at by the cinematography.

 

I wish they hadn't had that line about losing the ability to dream normally, or I would have said that the end sequence is a normal dream Cobb is having, his own dream, and that that's why the top starts to wobble at the end; he knows it's supposed to, and for once his mind is creating the whole dream. Maybe that still works, if you want to believe that one real dream was his reward for making his peace with his mental image of Mal (which is laughably inaccurate, haha. As if Mal would try to convince him to stay in a dream when she killed herself trying to get out of one, and ruined his life to try to make him do the same).

 

The thing I understand least in this film is actually how Cobb's totem works. Or is it Mal's totem? Doesn't he say something at one point about how she came up with totems? Well, whatever. I understand how the other totems work; in shared dreaming, one person is generating the environment, and totems are items that people other than the totem user will generate incorrectly (by giving them different weight or balance, usually), allowing the totem user to tell that another mind is generating their surroundings. This presumably would not work in normal dreaming, or if the totem user was acting as the person who generates the environment (I forget what they called this in the film, haha), which is the basis of my preferred interpretation of the ending in the paragraph above. But Cobb's totem doesn't really make sense, haha. Why do minds other than his own make the top spin forever? Is he the only one who subconsciously knows about friction? And why did the totem work in limbo, if that's where Mal invented it? And how did it get out of limbo with them, if it was invented in the collective unconscious and therefore immaterial?

 

Damn, maybe WFC was right. =[