Tag Archives: Inception

Summer Movie Awards

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The Most Laughs: The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right is easily the funniest movie of the year. The film covers some heated topics and touchy themes through the lightest and most heart-warming approaches via careful cinema and clever story. With its incredibly humorous undertones that hide behind genius dialogue, writing and delivery, the film toys around with the most hilarious tongue and cheek. No puns intended.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Biggest Cash-In: Knight and Day

The recent queen of cash-ins Cameron Diaz has had another explosivly exploitative summer, drawing massive amounts of money from massively dull movies like Shrek Forever After and Knight and Day, which showed us the same lame for our money. Diaz doing her usual self-portrayals in crappy action movies wasn’t the only offender, Tom Cruise hoping for a career saving hit and director James Mangold have both had better days.

Read REVIEW HERE

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Deception: The Conceptual Complexity of ‘Inception’

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Prior to its release Inception had a wave of good publicity that put it on track to become the masterpiece and game changer brought to you by Christopher Nolan, the visionary behind The Dark Knight and the storyteller behind Memento.

In The Dark Knight Nolan reinvented the blockbuster, merging old school visual techniques with the best equipment and talent along with magnificent thematic storytelling. In Memento Nolan rewrote the rules of Hollywood narrative structure. In Inception Nolan was supposed to combine big budget with big ideas, but did he succeed?

For the most part reviewers have been saying no, and for good reason. The movie is long and spends a great portion of the beginning explaining its plot complexities, the rules and regulations of dream hopping, which can be boring and tedious with the absence of real action. Some have attacked the premise as being not as original as audiences think, stating that Inception’s silent homage to The Matrix or Shutter Island are rip-offs. In fact most of the backlash coming from critics stems from concept, which is confusing because concept is the strongest asset to the film. Picking out the flaws in length, lack of action, miscasting of Page, the mild performances, poor characterization or underdevelopment of Cotillard’s Mal character would be more fair arguments. Continue reading →

REVIEW: Inception

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Inception
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Marion Cotillard

Waves crashing to shore, then a body; these are both one of the first things we see in Inception, and one of the last.  Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated dream-thriller may wow you with its visual prowess, dazzle you with its high-ended concepts, and intrigue you with its heist-style head invading, but it has a typical Hollywood-style circular structure.

If it sounds like I’m already being hard on Nolan and his predetermined masterpiece, it’s only because you need to know right off the bat that it does not reinvent cinema the way it’s publicity campaign suggested.

Many reviews have pointed out all of Nolan’s influences (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix) and for good reason: Inception is chock full of moments where anyone who’s seen a sci-fi movie will chuckle to themselves.

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If they were in television… Christopher Nolan

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Notable films: Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight

Famous for: Stories grounded in realism, alterations to linear narrative structure, psychological themes, usage of symbolism, old school special effects with minimal CGI, excellent casting of prominent actors and dressing pretty classy, even on set.

Hypothetical title: Nostalgia

Hypothetical premise: Two young brothers are the only children of their parents. One is a charming, fair haired child and often the favorite of the parents because of his cleverness and personality. The other, a dark haired deviant child who often loses the affection of his parents due to his shortcomings when compared to his brother. The parents die when the boys are in their early adulthood, forcing the favorite and older to take over the family estate and the other treated as a child. Although the story does not mainly take place in this past, the flashbacks do.

In modern times, the dark haired brother is an unaccomplished writer and the blonde is a well-noted novelist, mostly for poaching the ideas of his brother while they were young. Following their career successes, failures and rivalries, the show digs into where the stories come from during their childhood, the death of their parents and how they can learn to travel back into those memories with their writing, meaning memories may not exist at all. Continue reading →

Inception’s Early Reviews: It’s Just the Beginning

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Among the endless and plaguing remakes, reboots and sequels which Hollywood has been chastised for earlier in our State of the Box Office, comes a willing, bold beacon of hope to rise up against the order of Hollywood and save the summer from a single state of mind, a breath of fresh air, a sneaking guardian, a… dark knight perhaps?

Maybe. At least that is the word so far.

Early reviews for Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bender are calling the Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight creator’s newest film “easily the most original movie idea in ages.” Peter Travers from Rolling Stone rated the film three and a half out of four stars, complimenting Nolan’s audacity in storytelling, visuals and ambitions. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and a handful of other notable publications have all joined the bandwagon, commending the film for skipping CGI for in-camera photo-realistic imagery, its grand multi-reality setting and complex narrative. Continue reading →

Director Vanity: Stars That Look Like Their Directors

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After seeing Leonardo DiCaprio’s haircut in Inception which looked all to familiar to Christopher Nolan’s iconic ‘do, it seemed fitting to investigate other notable director and star look-a-likes. It took a recent Entertainment Weekly cover of Robert Downey Jr. with a slicked back looking Jew-fro that couldn’t be ignored in comparison to Jon Favreau’s to finally make this a post. Here are some of the notable look-a-like director and star combos. Can you thing of any more!?

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton

Projects together: Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands

Look the most alike in: Edward Scissorhands

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Summer Box Office Predictions

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1. Inception

Release date: July 16th

Plot summary: Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is an agent who has the technology to enter the minds of business tycoons to retrieve their strategies and sell them to the highest bidder. But the mind is no safe place for Dom and his team who find themselves in a place where things can rearrange and people can have powers outside of reality. When a heist goes wrong, one CEO seeks to steal the technology from the thieves attacking him.

Why it will rule: Just a few short summers ago, Christopher Nolan delivered audiences The Dark Knight, a domestic and overseas smash that made $1 billion worldwide and nabbed the attention of critics and mainstream audiences alike. Nolan’s talent lies in making brilliant narratives into dark, compelling films that are popularized by their own quality. Add in Leonardo DiCaprio and his latest success with Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Warner Bros. incredible marketing team for dark blockbusters, it looks to be a hit. All that and the trailer proves that this is going to be Memento mind-bending with The Dark Knight effects squad and July release.

Why it will fail: With the exception of the Batman franchise, Nolan has yet to have a real big blockbuster. Without the branding, and without knowing what it is really about, audiences might turn down this smarter box office fair for more Transformers style blow em’ up blockbusters as entertainment. Also, this movie is missing the Heath Ledger effect.

Estimated box office: $100 million OW / $410 million Domestic

2. Toy Story 3

Release date: June 18th Continue reading →