Inception

Of Christopher Nolan's movies, I have seen Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and now Inception. He has been a writer and director for all these and I have to give him ridiculous credit for the vision he has for his movies. With the exception of Memento, to my eye, the worlds he has created have enough anachronisms that you're not sure if the story is set in the past, present, some dystopic future, or a parallel universe. I have absolutely been sucked into the worlds he has created on the screen and Inception is the latest one where I have become lost in. I cannot say that I'd want to live in any of the worlds he has created but I am in awe of him for putting such a viscerally and visually perceptive one onscreen.

The visual weight is compounded by the emotional weight threaded in the story lines. Of his movies I've seen the protagonist is wrestling with the loss of a loved one, his role in her demise, and the ensuing guilt. This journey always hooks me and I can't help but wonder why this is a common theme in Nolan's movies--though a tip of the hat in that each movie handles it differently.

I'm not sure if I could even give a decent summary of this movie--given that the subject and world is intertwined with dreams, I'm not sure if I knew which scenes were supposed to be grounded in reality. You walk in accepting the fact that this is a world where dream espionage is a common corporate threat. If you've seen commercials or trailers for this movie, you know it's visually arresting. The characters are all fascinating and I ended up just accepting the theories they put out as fact and science or else I know I'd fall behind trying to question why their posits are true or not. At this point I'm still wondering if seeing it more than once would clarify anything.

Overall I'd give this movie an A-. When a movie stays in my mind for a while after I've seen it, I can't help but rate it highly. But it's been staying in my mind like a dream I've been trying to figure out and I'm not sure if that's good thing or not.