Inception
How do you follow The Dark Knight? If you’re writer-director Christopher Nolan, with a cerebral hit about an A-Team of dream spies. Inception has been called both “adult” and “intelligent,” which means basically that its complicated universe is only explained once by the furiously expositing characters. After that, you’re on your own. Leonardo Di Caprio is the Hannibal leading his team of pros into neurotic industrialist Cillian Murphy‘s head. Newbies will quickly realize that the less one knows the better—part of Inception‘s rare thrill is wondering where it’s going. Vets will want to see it again to figure out what happened. Another possibility is just to sit back and enjoy having the movie tickle parts other so-called blockbusters don’t. For one, Nolan has assembled an ace cast that lets Ellen Page stretch, Joseph Gordon-Levitt establish his star credentials, and Tom Hardy (Rocknrolla) introduce himself. French knockout Marion Cotillard provides glamour as Di Caprio’s murderous wife. There’s also a brace of killer action scenes, including one that cuts between a floating Gordon-Levitt, a James Bond-style sequence in snowy mountains, and a slow-motion van accident, all amid in-jokes like an opening that washes up the star of Titanic on a faraway beach. Both thrilling and unaccountably romantic, Inception is a example of moviemaking at its very best.
Extras: The Bluray Combo pack includes a making of featurette, a documentary on dreams hosted by Gordon-Levitt, and an animated prologue that explains the movie’s cold open.
- By C. Bottomley
