Not once during the whole movie did I question how the device did what it did. Why? Because it was completely irrelevant. Best movie I've seen in that past 10 years I figure.
I couldn't agree more. It's a macguffin. Alas, here, I cannot agree with you. I watched Salt on the same weekend (last), and it was much better. Now, I've been a fan of Nolan since Memento (which easily outshines this flick...), but I really think he missed the mark here. The major problem for me was that the push to drive character development was much to brash. This was tiresome, and I found myself not being remotely concerned with Cobb's (DiCaprio's character) history. It was patently obvious what the issue here was, thus, the conclusion just as obvious. No doubt, I'd watch it again, but buy it? Nah.
I haven't seen Memento or Salt so I can't compare. I agree with you about the character development on Cobb's part. I didn't care about what happened to him either. In fact, I was more connected with the girl than Cobb - maybe it was just me? I think it would have been a better choice to develop the characters more and cut out some of the monotonous action scenes (especially the snow part) which started to bore me after a while. Also... why does it ALWAYS have to be "the guy just trying to reunite with his kids and/or wife"? Can Hollywood come up with no other altruistic motives? All that said the movie was refreshing and left me thinking about after the film was over. I've gotta recant my "best movie in 10 years" though. It was the best movie I've seen since "The Fountain" which was 3 years ago I believe. I wrote that after I had just seen the movie and I was dead tired so it's a bit exaggerated. ******Spoiler******* Was the ending scene where Cobb was talking to an old Sito (the asian guy) the same as the opening scene exactly? I couldn't remember. Now if it is the same, doesn't this suggest that Cobb was in a giant loop and that he had to break out of it by remembering why he was there in the first place? And that he would have repeated almost exactly everything that had happened in the movie from that point on if he hadn't remembered? Did anyone here interpret it differently?
state, Overall, I have to say, I agree with all of your thoughts. I highly recommend Memento. It follows a character who cannot make new memories, so, every day, he wakes up, and doesn't know where he is, what he's doing, etc. In this situation, he's trying to find out who killed his wife. Amazing. As for Salt, well, I wasn't expecting much, and perhaps that's why I enjoyed it so much. The cool thing I liked about it was, there's a twist, but atypically, it happens pretty early in the flick.. and then it just ramps up. Definitely worth a watch. Exactly my thoughts. I kept thinking to myself, if any character here should be the focus, it should be the new girl on the crew. lol Again, you're totally right. So overused. For sure. I think it was exactly the same. See, I don't think it means anything at all though, despite all the chatter about how the flick is all 'temporally reflexive'. I think that was nothing but the director's way of hooking the viewer, and setting the scene. A not unusual trick for Nolan to use.
So you think what Nolan did was to show the last scene in the opener and then it cut to an irrelevant point that looked similar? I mean it's possible and I know the technique you're talking about. My mom thought the same thing actually. It just seems too coincidental that Nolan would use the same exact scene and then have them go two different ways. Do you get how I'm seeing it though?
This was my thought as well. Setting up the scene, then jumping back to tell the story leading up to that point.
Yep, I think that's exactly what he did. Yeah, I know what you're getting at here. I think I'm right, simply based upon Nolan's work. He uses this technique in Memento, and other flicks. In Memento, throughout the flick, you'll see the exact same scene up to 3 times, each time, subtly different. Of course, I could be totally wrong. I just think that, as of late (say, since the mid 90's..) people are tending to way over-analyze the way directors have started to mess with a linear chronology. I mean, people freaked when Pulp Fiction came out, but really, there's nothing to it; you can literally edit out all the scenes, and re-sequence them temporally, and it's a straight up linear flick...
Follow up, As far as "Best Movie I've Seen in the Last Ten Years" goes..... Well, my first inclination, without thought was easily The Matrix. Alas, that was technically released in 1999. And so, oddly enough, my vote for "Best of the Last Ten" goes to another Nolan flick: The Dark Knight. Wanna see weird though: check this out: Top 2000 - 2009 Much room for discussion and/or controversy therein.
Ouch! I've only seen four out of the Top Ten (and three of those are the LoTR trilogy). Does that qualify me as culturally deprived? (And only 5 out of the Top Twenty, with a sixth on DVD that I haven't got round to watching yet). - 14 out of the Top 50, with one of those (Gladiator) I'd rather not have seen at all. Fortunately I haven't even heard of any of the Bottom Ten.
Yah I had to take that number down to 2-3. Eww... Dark Knight is #1? I agree with everyone else that the Joker was great but after you factor in Christian Bale's "Bat-voice" it levels out to just an above average movie.
I just saw inception at the movie theater while waiting for my car to get an alignment. What a piece of crap. It was a confused mess, and I left before the end.
No, it didn't confuse me, it was just a confused mess of a movie. The complications just made me not give a damn about the plot. The dialogue was ridiculous, and the acting was terrible.
Maybe you would have liked the ending, if you had stayed?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Maybe, but the movie lost me. I'm sorry, it only gets one chance. I mean, I even love bad sci-fi movies, but this was worse than bad. It's like it's complication was an attempt to make up for it's total lack of interest. It didn't make me care about the complications. Why did they say dreaming takes more subjective time than reality? I never found that, it seems to me to take much less. I guess where they lost me is the layers of dreaming; dreaming within a dream taking exponentially more subjective time, OK some movies have an absurd premise. Why would they hire an architect to design a dream world? This architect character was not credible. How could she not already know about this dreaming technology? Wouldn't it be all over Wired magazine? Why was all this technology available in a time when society as a whole showed no evidence of it's influence? How is it she just jumped in unquestioningly? How could their whole team be so unprepared for their mission? At some point, the whole thing just got so absurd, it wasn't worth caring about. It was trying to be The Matrix, but with the shallow action quality of a Rambo movie. It was just dumb. I wonder what people are saying about it on IMDB.
