Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Inception

Inception, 2010
Dir: Christopher Nolan

Despite all of the overblown dialogue and comparisons surrounding this film, it is an absolute blast. But let's get this straight, "people who actually get paid to write about movies": it bears only the most superficial resemblance to something from a Philip K. Dick novel (who created layered realities so he could play with imaginatively bleeding the layers between them, not so characters in one layer could have gravity free fistfights because a van jumps off a bridge in another) or a Stanley Kubrick film (who was a consummate visual thinker when he was making anything worthwhile, whereas Nolan blares what few enticing images he has with trumpets; Kubrick also would never have an irrelevant psychology motivating his characters in his films and would never have characters give dopey speeches explaining said psychology just in case he’s afraid the audience is too dumb to get it). This thing owes more reverence to the Wachowski brothers than anything.

I will say though, in fairness, it’s really, really nice to see a Hollywood film that avoids sentimentality, if not melodrama (seriously, who gives a shit about the dead wife), and that knows how to organize its magic gun-pointing for some minimal intellectual interest, even if the magic gun-pointing is what it’s about. I'm not sure if it's the films fault for all the hoopla going on about what it is, but enough is enough. Gravity free fist fights are rad, and nothing else.

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