The Bikeriders (3/5 Stars)

“The Bikeriders” was adapted by writer/director Jeff Nicholas (Take Shelter, Loving) from a book of the same name by journalist Danny Lyon. This is not a book I’ve read or one which has piqued my interest from watching the movie. It would seem to me that as a journalist, he spent a lot of time interviewing the wrong people. This story is ostensibly about a motorcycle club named the Vandals from the Midwest, but his main interviewee is not a member of the club. Instead, she is the wife of one of the members and she admittedly doesn’t understand the appeal of the club or motorcycles in general and appears to be entirely ambivalent as to whether it exists at all. It doesn’t even seem to think her insights are really worth the recording and seems to be participating as a lark. Now, if you were interested in this material, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that she isn’t the best tour guide

Her name is Kathy (played by Jodie Comer) and the view of this motorcycle club is seen through her eyes mainly. Indeed, the movie’s narrative opens up not with the formation of the club, but her first random foray into it, going to bar the club frequents to meet up with a friend of hers. She immediately doesn’t like it since the place and all the people in it give off dangerous uncouth vibes. Still she sticks around after deciding to leave when she notices one club member that is much better looking then the others, Benny.

Benny has one and one only redeeming attribute: he looks like Austin Butler. Now, I’m not saying that Beeny is a bad person. No, I’m saying he is a boring person, but for the fact that he looks like Austin Butler. I don’t recall him doing a single interesting thing in this entire movie. We are told he is not good at riding motorcycles (he keeps crashing), doesn’t appear to have a job (do any of these guys have jobs?) and is not good for conversation. He mainly broods and like every other man in this movie binge drinks and chain smokes in every scene. Clearly, Kathy's attraction to him is built on lust. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t explore or even admit that this is what we are watching. When asked why she liked him, Kathy just says she doesn’t know, especially since Benny is kind of stupid and gets her into all kinds of trouble. Frankly, this woman isn’t a good tour guide for her own love life.

There might have been a character that would have made sense to build this story around, and that would be Johnny (played by Tom Hardy), the leader of the club. This may have answered, if there was such an answer, the big looming question: what is a motorcycle club, like what is it supposed to be doing with its time? Because it appears like they mainly ride their bikes, have picnics, and drink.. It is revealed that Johnny got the inspiration for the club from watching The Wild One, a motorcycle movie starring Marlon Brando. That character is described as a rebel. Someone asks him what he is rebelling against, and he replies “What do you got?”.

This nihilistic response can be an inspiring call to action for men who don’t really fit in anywhere else. But of course, you can’t just meet and do nothing all the time. If you can’t afford gas, you aren’t going anywhere. Like everything else in life, even don’t-give-a-shit rebels need money, and, if your organization has no purpose and is full of unemployable ne'er do wells who don’t want to work, well, is it any surprise your network is eventually taken over by a criminal element. The last half of the movie has a lot of former members complaining about how the organization went south.

I’m reminded of Banksy from Exit Through the Gift Shop commenting on how the anarchist rebellious movement of street art was capitalized upon by Thierry, a man devoid of any artistic instincts. “I don’t think Thierry played by the rules, in some ways, but then there aren’t supposed to be any rules. So I don’t know what the moral is.” 

But not only that, your wife is unimpressed.

Dunkirk (4/5 Stars)

 “Dunkirk” recreates of an early event in World War II when the German blitzkrieg flanked and encircled the entire British army at the beaches of Dunkirk while the German Luftwaffe bombed them from above and German U-Boats terrorized the British channel.

It is entirely possible that the large majority of the British army, around 400,000 men, may have died on that beach. The British navy was not sending the bulk of their destroyers to evacuate the men because of the superiority of the German air force and submarine fleet. The last and only hope was to draft all the “little ships” of the England, civilian boats, to cross the channel and pick up the boys. As a retreat it was so successful it became the stuff of legend. Only 40,000 men were expected to live. The British with the help of the civilian effort rescued ten times that amount and a good amount of the French army too.

Writer and Director Christopher Nolan treats the subject matter with solemnity and reverence. Individual stories are sacrificed to the events as a whole. (In fact, I can’t remember most of the names of the characters.) There is no back-story and no locations that are not on Dunkirk, therefore no characters that aren’t on-the-ground soldiers. This minimalism suits the sense of isolation and the impending doom felt by the men on the beach.

What is innovative is the structure of the story. Here, again, Director Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar) engages his forte. The movie is divided into three parts and seamlessly switches between the three. The first is the Mole (french word for pier thing on the beach) and takes place over a week and covers the entire week that the evacuation took place in. The second is the Sea and takes place over a single day that the little ships were involved in the evacuation. The third is the Air and takes place over a single hour that the British Air Force provided a cover mission for the evacuation. The Air’s hour takes place during the Sea’s day which takes place during the Mole’s week. It is not necessarily intuitive that these stories could seamlessly move back and forth between each other, but Nolan once again proves that he knows how to clearly tell a seemingly convoluted story. I was not particularly confused as to what was happening when.

And it makes sense story-wise. If Nolan had told the story straight chronologically, the second and especially the third story-line would have been sandwiched unfairly near the end, thereby reducing the historical importance of the sea and air efforts. This way, they are all given equal time (even though the their times are unequal) and the movie has this interesting relativistic effect. The faster the characters move, the slower time seems to move for them, and an hour in a British Spitfire roaring across the channel equals the time spent by a man walking on the ground.

Most of the actors, though talented like Tom Hardy (airplane) and Cillian Murphy (ground), could have been replaced because of the deliberate motive of the movie to have the scenario overpower any one individual story. There is one exception and that is the civilian captain of one of the little ships, played by Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The nobility of the man shines through and gives incarnate form to the humble and collective spirit of Dunkirk that became the stuff of legend. His interactions with a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) provide the heart of the movie. “There’s no turning back from this, son,” he states and there is a power in the understated yet unwavering purpose behind his intonations. Keep Calm and Carry On indeed.

The Revenant (5/5 Stars)

This much is true: In 1823 on Captain Henry’s expedition up the Missouri River, Hugh Glass was attacked by a bear. He was severely wounded. His compatriots could not carry him all the way back to the fort. Two young men, Bridger (18) and Fitzgerald (23) stayed behind to wait for help as the rest went ahead. Bridger and Fitzgerald abandoned Hugh Glass without food or supplies. Hugh Glass crawled and stumbled the some 200 miles back to the fort alone.

This much is also true: Right around the time Director Alejandro Innaritu and Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki were accepting their respective Oscars for Birdman, an on location film shoot was going on in the frigid winter of Wyoming or South America or some other godforsaken place. The conditions were so terrible that they were starting to leak into the press Apocalypse Now style. “The Revenant” was that movie and watching the movie, it looks like hell froze over on the film shoot. I do not know if this movie will join “Apocalypse Now” and “Fitzcarraldo” in the legendary realms of ridiculously hard film shoots but the affect in the theater is akin to those movies. In other words, this movie does the original true story right. It feels like Leonardo Dicaprio (Hugh Glass) was attacked by a bear, abandoned by his compatriots, and ended up crawling two hundred miles to safety through blizzards and Indian attacks. It is an intense awesome movie.

A main star of the movie (and what separates it from all other Westerns) is the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki. He is well known for two things. First are his long takes. There are plenty in this movie but I hardly recognized or paid attention to them. When watching his previous movies like Gravity and Birdman, the long takes were part of the excitement. They are less so here as Lubezki uses them plenty but does seem to feel as if he needs to use them exclusively. That is to say when it makes story sense to not keep on the same shot, he doesn’t. Second is simply the look of the movie that seems to only occur in movie shot by him. For the past decade he has perfected this beautiful look in movies such as The New World, The Tree of Life, Gravity, Birdman. It must be hard to do because it looks so great and yet he seems to be the only one doing it. “The Revenant” was shot entirely in winter using only natural light. The result is a movie that does not look like any other movie. It is a ghostly haunted visual effect of denotes the hardness and coldness of life at that time. Lubezki rightly was awarded the Oscar for the past two years. He may very well win again this year and he would deserve it. He is in the prime of a spurt of aritistic genius.

Leonardo Dicaprio may very well win his first Oscar this year and he too would deserve it. This actor I believe has achieved a certain Meryl Streep-ness or Philip Seymour Hoffman-ness that makes it seem that he is perfect for every role he finds himself in. The secret is a full on commitment to the role and if there ever was anyone committed to a role it is Dicaprio here. Here he is wrestling a bear, swimming through icy rivers, eating raw meat, and fighting hand to hand with Indians. His last role was “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It takes a special actor to be the right choice for both roles.

Playing his antagonist, Fitzgerald, is an actor that was made for rugged terrain, the art house muscle man Tom Hardy. The movie does a good job of setting up his villainy. He has worked painstakingly for the last six months only for an Indian attack to steal all of the wealth of the expedition. He was half-scalped earlier in his life (he has a scar that makes him partly bald) and so does not particularly like or more importantly trust Hugh Glass’s half Pawnee son. He is a desperate angry man. Between the two is Captain Henry played by Domnhall Gleeson, who is good looking enough to be a man with money but odd looking enough to belong in the 19^th century. This guy is everywhere this year and impressively pulls off many different characters.

I am playing with the idea of drawing up a syllabus of American History through movies and “The Revenant” is one of those movies I would love to have in it. What makes it better in historical terms that any old western is the unflinching way it shows the elements and the noble/savage way it treats Native Americans. This is particularly important because we have a tendency to look at history in black and white terms. But that is not how this movie treats the Akirawa tribe. It humanizes them and gives them appropriate motivations but it also does not hide the fact that they are extremely dangerous and have their own tribal prejudices. It also portrays them as losers in their struggle as is noted by a scene in which Fitzgerald and Bridger walk through the remnants of a massacre of an Indian village. This too is important.  Lastly, what other movie do you know takes place in 1823. No other movie. Exactly. 

Mad Max: Fury Road (5/5 Stars)

The main criticism that well regarded movie critics have thrown at blockbusters from time immemorial is their lowest common denominator nature. As products intended for the masses the big corporate studios (only people who can afford to make big blockbuster movies) dumbed down and sanitized the product in an effort to have it appeal to the broadest audience possible. In recent years there has been a welcome shift away from that mission plan. The causes are not completely known (although for my money I would give much credit to the silent digital revolution in movies which makes them a lot cheaper to make) but the effects can be perhaps perfectly exemplified in the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a great blockbuster that is definitively not for everybody. It is what I will call (and I am coining a phrase here, (Watch Out!) a “niche blockbuster.” Its appearance was foreshadowed by the delightfully kooky yet still rather tame blockbuster  “Guardians of the Galaxy” last year, but here it has fully come of age in the grotesque apocalyptic vision of Mad Max land. To say that “Mad Max: Fury Road,” is merely a reboot of the cult B-movies of the 1980s does not do it justice. This is a new type of movie and one that should give hope to all those that care about movies. We are going through a rather intense revolution in how media is consumed right now and the local movie theater will not be spared from change as well. If George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are to be believed (and why not they should know something) we may very well be on the verge of only having very expensive blockbusters in movie theaters and everything else being delegated to the ever expanding cinema realm of one’s living room. The pessimists then have predicted a future where one’s local cineplex no longer shows anything interesting, strange, or weird, (i.e. original), but that does not seem to be happening at least not entirely. As the biggest blockbusters get ever bigger the lesser blockbusters are becoming more targeted in their subject matter, tone, and intended audience. It is of great surprise and relief and wonder that Mad Max: Fury Road has retained the look and feel of the original movies. This shows great gumption in the studio heads that bankrolled the big budget because the original movies were cult movies for a reason. They were unapologetically focused on car chases in the unforgiving desert wasteland between inarticulate anti-heroes and the grotesque caricatures of really bad really ugly men. This is essentially the same in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the main exception being a desire to expand the audience beyond the average teenage male gearhead and allow women in on the fun. But women are allowed in only on Mad Max terms of course; the main female character Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron channeling her inner badass) has only one arm. Why? Well times are tough in the future and if women want to be part of the gang they have to be tough too. I think this movie may have broken the record for gun-toting biker grannies.

It will not take too long to summarize the plot of the movie. Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is taken prisoner by Immortan Joe, a terrifying slavemaster. As Mad Max is hanging down from the ceiling with his blood being drained out of him into a War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), news comes that Immortan Joe’s five harem sex slaves have been emancipated by one of his great warriors, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). Immortan Joe sets off after her with the help of his evil allies in Gas Town and the Bullet Farm (The two main economies of what is left of the world). There are also wild bandits. You can tell these guys apart because of their distinctive cars. They chase Imperator and then chase her some more. In between all of this Mad Max frees himself and teams up with Furiosa. That’s the movie essentially. Given that the original movies were no more complex this is exactly how complex the reboot should be if it were being faithful to the original material. The point has never been the screenplay. It is what is on the screen. 

And boy what is on the screen. First it should be mentioned that the world in “Mad Max” is a fully realized apocalyptic fever dream. Much like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ it would be entirely acceptable if the movie got Oscar Nominations for Makeup, Costumes, and Production Design. I cannot imagine those three things being any better in this movie. If I were to sum up the tone of the movie I would single out one of the main bad guy’s cars. Stationed on top of this large eighteen-wheeler is an electric guitarist backed by ginormous speakers, clad entirely in red leather and suspended in midair by multiple bungee chords. When he hits the climax of a particularly intense solo the guitar doubles as a flamethrower, which spews flames out of the top. A Whole Lotta Love right there in the production design.

The performances are exactly what they should be. Tom Hardy seems to get it. He speaks as little as possible and only in gruff monosyllabic mutters. The bad guys seem to come entirely from the World Wresting Federation. Imperator Furiosa is steely and resolved and totally resourceful. And then there is Nicholas Hoult’s Nux who is completely insane. The War Body army is a group of Albino Berserkers entirely convinced that death in battle is but the beginning of a paradise in Valhalla. They throw themselves in and around the cars in these battles with an extraordinary lack of self-preservation. Hoult’s performance is perhaps the best and most original performance in the movie. Thankfully, he sticks around much longer than one thinks possible and his presence is never less than interesting. I looked him up and was astonished that he is the kid from that Hugh Grant movie “About a Boy.” Incredible what he has grown up to be capable of. What is perhaps most important is that between all the great car chases we have still scenes that do not weigh down the story with melodrama or pretentiousness. There is an emotional core here that works even though it is not required to work all that hard.

The fights and car chases are essentially theatrical wrestling matches. There is no way in hell that cars can continue to function in any of these situations (particularly with all the desert dust going around) and no way in hell that men can take the kind of beatings they do here without any type of blood or bruises. But the action is well done. The physics are within the realm of the suspension of disbelief. And the viewer is never all that confused as to where and what everybody is doing. There is no Oscar nomination for Stunt Direction but when you see a movie that does it so well like this one does you can really grasp the injustice of such an omission. Next year I will certainly include such a category in my own Oscar picks. This movie would make a great video game by the way.

I think one more note can be said about this movie’s feminism. I’ve seen enough movies now to not be all that surprised by the prospect of a woman toting a gun or engaging in something else that is traditionally masculine. There is a tendency though for movies to really pat themselves on the back for their progressive views. That is getting a bit tiring. I think from now on just give the girls their guns and spare me the speeches about how daring the movie is being. It was daring when Ridley Scott and James Cameron did it in the 1980s. I was born in 1986 and don’t really remember a time when the movies weren’t feminist. Hell, Titanic came out when I was eleven and it took me at least a decade to actually see what old movies James Cameron was giving his pro-woman finger to (cough ‘Gone With the Wind’ cough cough). I’m not saying that ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is all that speechifying. It isn’t. But when you’ve got an army of gun-toting grannies in a major motion blockbuster franchise that is, if anything, defined by its testosterone, I think we can start giving the special treatment a rest. I’m not so impressed by the dog walking on its hind legs or even walking on its hind legs well anymore. 

The Dark Knight Rises (4/5 Stars)

Occupying Wall Street, if only

I would say that director Christopher Nolan’s greatest ambition with his Batman trilogy is to make the effort worth his time and talent. Here is a guy who has made some of the best and most original movies of the past ten years (Memento, The Prestige, Inception) and yet finds himself in between each of his better projects having to make yet another Batman picture. He made the first one because he was not yet a famous director. He made so much money that he was practically forced to complete a trilogy. Of course, in this day and age, trilogies are things of the past when more money can be wringed out of the type of fans that feel they are honor bound to “must see” every movie about a character (see Twilight, Harry Potter, Terminator, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman).  But with this movie I think we can be certain that Christopher has finally paid all of his Hollywood dues.  From here on out we should be able to enjoy his creative license unfettered by silly comic books

Comic books are silly. They are so silly that almost every trick a serious movie director can throw at an adaptation of one cannot completely overcome the unreality of it all. It takes a great director to come close though and Nolan employs some rather great tricks to get as far as he did.  

First, he has created a true never before scene spectacle by embracing IMAX and physical effects as opposed to 3D and CGI in his action sequences. There is a rawness and realism to physical effects that makes violence feel more visceral than computer generated effects. Compare the fight scenes in this movie with another comic book tent-pole this year, “The Avengers,” and you will see what I mean. There is an element of horror present in the way the main villain Bane, played by art house muscle-man Tom Hardy, goes around beating the shit out of people with his bare hands that is noticeably absent in “The Avengers.” You look at the way he kicks ass and go, “ouch.” It’s good stuff. (On another note, a serious detriment to the effectiveness of the action is the PG-13 rating. Bane twists and breaks a lot of necks in this movie, but these actions are only visually implied and always just off-screen.)  The IMAX is incredible and actually worth paying more money to see (as opposed to say anything but “Avatar’ in 3D). The cool thing is that Nolan is not just using IMAX for cityscapes and sunsets; he is using it for conversations and fistfights. And it isn’t for just a scene; half of the movie was filmed with IMAX cameras. There is more clarity, there is more detail, and it is far grander.

Second, Nolan actively tries to ignore elements of the comic book. Take for instance the character of Selina Kyle, played by Anne Hathaway. In the comic book she is a leather bound fanboy fantasy known more often as “Catwoman.” The name “Catwoman” is not uttered in this movie, nor does Selina Kyle spend her alter ego time in fetishistic leather carrying a whip. Nolan rightly chooses to drop these details and focus on the woman. In fact, he does this with Batman, played again by Christian Bale, as well. There is far more Bruce Wayne in this movie than his alter ego. And it works too. Usually it is the villain that spruces up a sequel because the hero is already established. Not here, Bruce Wayne is a more compelling character than the mysterious Bane. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Bane is never without this breathing contraption that covers his features and masks his emotions and motivations. You need to be able to see evil geniuses without their disguises in order to grasp the understanding needed to truly fear them. Masks are for flunkies like Darth Vader. Keep that in mind as you watch this movie.

Third, Nolan always contains an undercurrent of current political issues in the Batman movies. In the second movie, we had the Dark Knight providing vigilante justice against terrorism using techniques Dick Cheney would deem absolutely necessary. (It is a relief to see a movie tilt right in its politics every once in a while if only for originality’s sake.) In this movie, we have a strong current of class warfare. One of the early targets of Bane is the stock market where he takes several bankers as hostages. Then there is Selina Kyle, the cat burglar who steals from mansions and tells a vacuous billionaire, “There is a storm brewing, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” It would be an incredible and ballsy thing to do and pull off this type of conflict. Here you have Batman, whose alter ego is a billionaire playboy who inherited all his wealth and stature, and on the other side you have Bane, a man born with nothing in what is referred to as the worst jail on Earth. He escapes and builds his army of menial laborers and wayward forgotten youth underground in the sewers of Gotham city till one day he rises up to daylight and takes over the city. Unfortunately even though Bane professes that his many acts of terrorism are acts of class warfare against the greedy and ungrateful rich amongst us, it turns out it is just a cover for more humdrum motivation. Bane wants to simply destroy Gotham entirely. I know, I know. That disappointed me too. It’s a recycled nefarious plot that the movie freely admits is identical to the one in the first movie, “Batman Begins,” except this time the villain is going to try it with a nuclear bomb.

 There is a problem with that of course visually speaking. For those that remember “Batman Begins,” the Gotham in that movie looked and felt like a leaking shit-bucket, something that would actually make sense (using warped logic but still some logic) to wipe off the face of the Earth. You can’t say that of the city in which “The Dark Knight Rises” takes place. There has been a rather grand transformation of Gotham between the years, even more so considering the way the city looked like in “The Dark Knight.” I mean the first place looked fictional, the second place looked very much like Chicago, and this one is obviously Manhattan. The inconsistency is something that might make one wonder just where the hell is Gotham and why can’t the makers make up their mind about it. As far as I can tell, they changed the city to Manhattan in order to service a plot point. They needed a place with bridges to blow up. Again, the problem is that Manhattan nowadays looks unavoidably like a big pile of money. So a story about class warfare could certainly work, but a story about destroying a city because of its wretchedness wouldn’t. I will however give the movie credit in one important respect. It wasn’t the logistical nightmare that “The Dark Knight” was. Bane’s plans may be too grandiose to be plausible but they still followed the internal logic of the character as opposed to the meticulously thought out miracles of foresight the Joker, supposedly an agent of chaos, kept accomplishing.

Let me take a moment to explain what I mean by “too grandiose to be plausible,” because that phrase strikes to the heart of what the problem is with most comic book movies. Nowadays these movies are not simply content to be fun-filled frivolity. Nolan’s Batman trilogy is perhaps the best example. There is plenty of psychology, pathos, and Deep Meaning all over these movies. However the schemes of the villains are far too successful to make any sense given how simplistically they are accomplished or on the other hand how simplistically they are brought down. Because of this, the movie gains a feeling of unreality whenever say an entire police force armed only with handguns decides it would be good tactics to charge a line of tanks and machine guns at least fifty feet away from it in a narrow alley (and actually succeeds in doing so). This feeling of unreality tends to undercut all of the psychology, pathos, and Deep Meaning. There’s this great quote from Spiderman. It goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In respect to moviemaking, writers and directors have the power to pull heartstrings, change minds, and make us care deeply for the lives of fictional people. At the same time though, if they choose to commit the viewer to such catharsis, they also have the responsibility to not fill the rest of the movie with contrived bullshit. That means if you want to make me care about Michael Caine crying up a storm, I better not see action sequences that confound the laws of logic or physics or both later on in the movie. I really don’t think that is too much to ask. For the record, “The Dark Knight Rises,” for the most part does not have this problem. It just has it to the point where I cannot say it is a great movie. It isn’t. 

Inception (5/5 Stars) July 20, 2010

A movie of immense ambition perfectly realized

I recall a scene from Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Being John Malkovich’ where the title character starts crawling into the portal that will lead into his own head. Another character looks on and remarks, “What happens when a man goes through his own portal?” It was a very good question, particularly because at that point in movie history it had never happened before. There was no genre outline for what was supposed to happen. The movie had defied genre and boldly stepped into the realm of the truly original. I remember the sense of suspense and wonder that came from watching that particular scene. Where will this movie go? What will I see? What is going to happen next!? Now take the suspense and wonder from that one scene in ‘Being John Malkovich’ and prolong it for an entire movie and you will get a sense of what it feels like to watch “Inception,” the new movie by Director Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo Dicaprio. It is an experience that must have accompanied the people who first saw such movies as “Apocalypse Now” or “Citizen Kane.” It is an experience that occurs only when a movie reaches for that zenith of Ambition and realizes it perfectly. I don’t have to see any more movies this year to say that “Inception” will be the best one. It is quite possibly one of the best movies ever made. 

Now let me think, what was the movie about? It was very vivid when I first watched it. It would be best if I saw it twice but I will take a crack at describing it anyway. Right now there is a unique form of Corporate Espionage called ‘Extraction.’ A group of specialized corporate thieves drug a person, invade his subconscious through his dreams, and steal an idea. It’s a bit complicated. One person, usually the architect, is the actual dreamer. They create and control the dream world. The others involved in the heist and the actual victim are voyeurs in the dream and their subconscious fill in the blanks and details of the dreamer’s world. There are several dream rules that you may remember from your own experiences. Some of them include: You can never remember how a dream started. The dream is especially realistic because when a dreamer is dreaming they can’t tell that they are in a dream. You can escape the dream by dying or falling but ordinary pain won’t wake you up. The time in a dream is prolonged because of the amount of brainpower you exert. For example, ten seconds in the real world is a minute in a dream. Most interesting is the concept of a dream within a dream where all the previous rules apply but even more so.

But alas there is just too much to explain for a dinky little review. I can only say this: that the enormous amount of exposition was always exceedingly interesting to learn and exhilarating to watch. Most importantly, it made sense. Writer/Director Christopher is a master storyteller in that sense. Recall what he taught us in “Memento,” about memory and what he taught us in “The Prestige,” about magic. Both had convoluted plots but we always understood what was going on and why. In this movie he teaches us with the same skill about Dreams. But that’s not all. In this movie, the intellectual exercise is just half the equation. Let’s not forget that Christopher Nolan is also the man who gave us “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” Those were both great big summer blockbusters with incredible action sequences. “Inception” is the successful combination of Nolan’s two disparate talents: Intellectualism and Spectacle. Oh and what a powerful fusion of imagination it is! The thing about Dreams you know is that they are bound only by imagination. Thus huge special effects sequences fit right into the story seamlessly. They never feel forced. In fact, these action sequences will make you think even more about what is happening. This is best combination of smarts and physicality since “The Matrix.” It’s like Charlie Kaufman wrote a James Bond script. One of the best scenes has Joseph Gordon Levitt involved in a fistfight in a hotel lobby where the laws of gravity keep on shifting. Wow! No, I don’t have the space to explain why, but it was awesome! If Christopher Nolan doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Director this year then the Academy has a hole in its head. 

Wait, I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning. Leonardo Dicaprio is the leader of the group also known as the Extractor. His long time associate is played by Joseph Gordan Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, (500) Days of Summer). He is the Point Man. These two are approached by a very powerful corporate man played by Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai). He is the Tourist. Watanabe wants Dicaprio not to steal an idea from a corporate rival played by Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins) but to give that man an idea. This is known as “Inception.” If you thought Extraction, something that you had never heard of before was hard to pull off, Inception is twice as tough to accomplish. Too succeed in this mission Dicaprio hires Dileep Rao (Avatar, Drag Me to Hell). He is the Chemist and will provide the hardcore sedatives to lull everyone into a 10-hour deep sleep on a plane flight across the Pacific. Dicaprio also hires Tom Hardy, a man who specializes in shape-shifting. Within dreams he can impersonate friends, enemies, and beautiful women. He is the Shade. Then Dicaprio visits his father, played by Michael Caine, and asks for his most brilliant student. This turns out to be Ellen Page (Juno). She is the Architect. The Chemist will drug everyone. The Architect will design the Dream Space. The Shade will trick the corporate rival. The Tourist will provide backup. The Point Man gets to beat up bad guys in gravity changing hallways. The Extractor will plant the idea. 

I should also mention that the Extractor has something dark buried in his subconscious. It is the vision of his wife who used to be a part of his team. She is played by Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose). Since the Extractor’s relationship with his wife ended somewhat violently, his vision of her in his subconscious is quite a dangerous thing. Let’s just say she tries very hard to wake everybody up (i.e. she has a habit of killing people). 

By the way, I have only described the setup to the heist itself. So everything I just told you about is exposition. When we get into the heist, which plays out on several levels of dreams within dreams, then it gets really really interesting. I won’t give any spoilers because you wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway. It would be impossible to understand what happens in the second hour until you have actually watched the first. There is no way to jump into the middle here. Every single minute of the 2 hours and 40 minute movie is important. (By the way, those two hours and forty minutes seemed like a half hour watching this movie. I couldn’t have been more entranced.)

I think it is fair to say that Leonardo Dicaprio has the best agent in the world. He has done nothing but superior movies for about a decade now. (Shutter Island, Revolutionary Road, The Departed, Blood Diamond, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Catch Me if you Can). When you think about it, he also has an odd habit of picking roles that involve doomed romances. For instance have you noticed how many times his love interest has died/gone crazy (Inception, Shutter Island, Revolutionary Road) or that he’s died/gone crazy (Titanic, The Aviator, The Departed) or they both have died/gone crazy (Romeo & Juliet, Shutter Island). Then there are also instances where he just dies (The Quick and the Dead, Blood Diamond) or the love simply goes unrequited (Catch Me if You Can, Body of Lies, This Boy’s Life). I think his most successful romance was with Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York and I can’t really even remember if that relationship was ever consummated. He plays J. Edgar Hoover in his next movie, a closeted homosexual who openly despised gay people. Hoover did have a long-term relationship with another FBI man though. It seems hard to believe that a story about Hoover just might be Dicaprio’s most successful romance, but it might have that potential. With Dicaprio’s fine performances in two movies this year I believe he should be a front-runner for a Best Actor Oscar. If I had to choose which movie to nominate him for, it would be Shutter Island, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t also do a great job here. 

If I had to choose a performance I thought looked like the most fun though it would have to be Joseph Gordan Levitt’s. His fight in the hallway was just ridiculous. Also I had a blast in the scene where Ellen Page realizes an entire city landscape is at the whim of her imagination and starts rearranging the physics of it. What can I say, this movie is special. A freight train runs through a city street without the aid of railroad tracks. Yes it makes sense. Go ahead and take a leap of faith with a master storyteller.

A final note on the ending of the movie, which I believe was about one second to short. I believe that it would have toppled. I say this because I would be extraordinarily confused if it didn't. Right now, I am certain that it was wrong of Nolan to end the movie on an ambiguous note at all. To think he diligently led us all that way only to cut us off at the last moment is decidedly uncool. Of course, I remember being underwhelmed by the endings of both "Memento" and "The Prestige" when I first saw them also. But After watching both those movies again, I became much more accepting of what Nolan was trying to teach me. That's normal. When a movie introduces a new way of thinking about something (whether it be memory, magic, or dreams) it is hard to accept the new thought process right away. I know it is quite possible that "Inception" will be an even better movie the second time around. I'll add to this review my thoughts about the ending as soon as I get to see it a second time.