Saturday, July 17, 2010

Inception


I think I’m gonna start getting annoyed!!!
I just saw Inception, and it’s a cool movie…but it’s not perfect by any means… And that’s what’s gonna annoy me, because the lazy 10 out of 10 reviews are already starting to come in…
All I can do is break it down into what I liked and disliked about it…

Likes:
- The cast. Wow… Nolan certainly has an eye for an ensemble that works. I absolutely loved this cast. Ellen Page is always good (will she ever become an adult though?), Tom Hardy is phenomenal, great to see, I want to see him in loooads more films. Nice to see Ken Watanabe in something like this - he just ‘looks’ good (altho I struggled to hear some of his lines). Dileep Rao is a fab character actor, and it’s always good to see him. Marion Cotillard was just beautiful. But my Oscar goes to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who stole every scene he was in - he just fit this movie like a glove. Move over, Leo.
- The music - swooon, just beautiful.
- The effects, of course, although not as many as you’d think.


Dislikes:

- Okay, they try to make it all make sense and some ideas ring true and are clever - such as: you never remember the start of a dream etc. But at the end of the day, dreams are crazy! They don’t make sense! Where was that element in this movie? It was just the Matrix really…
- Too serious! Leonardo’s character was just a bit too serious - I mean, I know he had his ‘issues’, but still - what a downer! And Leo himself is a bit weird now - he’s not fat, but he’s big… I just can‘t figure him out and I found him hard to look at… And I kind of felt some moments were unintentionally funny - like when the gang are all tied up together in the hotel - it just looked silly. It was just all way too serious, and I think that worked against it.
- Exposition! Some stuff was left unexplained as if it was obvious, but sometimes things were explained maybe a bit too much - way too clunky. And I defy anyone to say they didn’t get ‘lost’ at some point in this movie, as they tried to remember which ‘layer’ they were watching, and why Ken Watanabe was suddenly okay, etc etc.

So all in all, I found it a frustrating movie, I can’t say I particularly understood it all, but Nolan really has a knack of hitting the spot in his movies and, damn him, he did make me shed a manly tear here and there (actually, to be honest, I was practically weeping in a couple of scenes featuring Marion Cotillard and Cillian Murphy).
But I really hope the movie doesn’t start getting universal ‘perfect scores’, because a movie with such clunky dialogue and crammed-in exposition and unintentionally funny moments is far from perfect, I think.
Please, reviewers, try to put aside your ‘man crushes’ on Christopher Nolan…

2 comments:

Dave Candlish said...

Thank God! I thought I was the only one to spot that Nolan isn't perfect. I thought he needed a strong editor on his Batman films as they weren't as good as others thought. I was beginning to feel like the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes

Mart said...

I just watched it again!
Enjoyed it a lot more - but I think there is so much to take in! Some stuff is explained in great detail, while other stuff is handled really glibly. And it doesn't help that some of the actors mumble a bit!!
There are certain questions like: when Fisher wakes up, wouldn't he be suspicious that all those people were in his dream? I'd say that maybe he didn't remember his dream or maybe he just wasn't suspicious because he just dreamed about the last people he'd seen - but it's weird that Nolan doesn't bother to explain it.
In the final second of the film, the whole audience gasped! I wish I'd been a gasper. I feel fairly thick actually lol - that I spent most scenes trying to work out what was going on!! Maybe i'd have gasped more if I'd seen Leo spin the top a couple of times, so the fact it stops moving becomes lodged in my brain.
(Spoilers from now on)
So the ending then could have three meanings:
- Leo is still dreaming
- Leo is in Mal's dream (maybe that is just my interpretation, I don't think it's a common one)
- The top does finish spinning so it's all okay yay! It's nice that we have this option, and I'd like to believe this one.