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Thoughts about "Inception"
Jul. 31st, 2010 03:06 pm2min back-of-an-envelope "review". Warning: do not expect depth or deep insight. Disclaimer: nicked from a mailing-list post 'cos I thought my LJ deserved a bit more content.
It was OK, quite enjoyable and reasonably diverting, although I felt it was over-long - it could have lost a good half an hour and benefited from it. It starts a bit slowly, too, then gathers some pace later. It is not as clever and subtle as it tries to be, substituting nested layers for real complexity, forcing the viewer to expend a little mental effort on tracking where they are in the stack for a truly complex plot. It has some good setups and reveals and quite effectively leaves you guessing on a couple of levels.
On the other hand, I found some of the plot devices a bit too heavy for my disbelief to suspend them, and some of the elements were a tad gratuitous or predictable.
I did like the use of Paris as the statutory lots-of-shots-of-a-big-city, as opposed to London, NY, LA or Frisco. Made a change.
It's not as thought-provoking as Memento but it's all right. It kept my mind working.
Entertainingly, a few of the reports I've heard from others who have seen it betray that they totally failed to grasp what it was about, the layered-realities concept, and thus found it a weird disjointed chase movie.
In other words: lots of people are dumb. Well, shock horror.
If a brainy nerd goes to see a film designed to make J. Random-Punter think a bit and comes out disappointed, well, either you don't know yourself very well or you don't know Hollywood very well, one or the other. The fault doesn't lie in the film, it lies in your expectations.
It's not a hard or complex film if you have a brain, but it makes you think and work a bit more than, oh, a Bond film or Snakes on a Plane. This is what passes for intelligence in Hollywood. If that's not enough for you, watch something made in black and white for $10,000 with subtitles.
I saw no real links or resemblance to any of the Matrix films. It has no elements of virtual reality, computers, aliens or nasties or big baddies, battles or wars or rebellions or any real themes in common. (It is also lamentably short of martial arts and starlets in PVC and latex, but I do not feel that these are critical omissions.) Pointing out that it questions the nature of reality and so does the Matrix is a bit like saying that Four Weddings and a Funeral is a rip-off of Les Liaisons Dangereuses because they're both all about interpersonal relationships. "Jejune" is the word that springs to mind except I always feel like a pretentious character from a Woody Allen film when I use it.
Pros: Christopher Nolan, no 3D
Cons: Leonardo di Caprio, silly Plot Device™
Stars: 3½ out of 5
It was OK, quite enjoyable and reasonably diverting, although I felt it was over-long - it could have lost a good half an hour and benefited from it. It starts a bit slowly, too, then gathers some pace later. It is not as clever and subtle as it tries to be, substituting nested layers for real complexity, forcing the viewer to expend a little mental effort on tracking where they are in the stack for a truly complex plot. It has some good setups and reveals and quite effectively leaves you guessing on a couple of levels.
On the other hand, I found some of the plot devices a bit too heavy for my disbelief to suspend them, and some of the elements were a tad gratuitous or predictable.
I did like the use of Paris as the statutory lots-of-shots-of-a-big-city, as opposed to London, NY, LA or Frisco. Made a change.
It's not as thought-provoking as Memento but it's all right. It kept my mind working.
Entertainingly, a few of the reports I've heard from others who have seen it betray that they totally failed to grasp what it was about, the layered-realities concept, and thus found it a weird disjointed chase movie.
In other words: lots of people are dumb. Well, shock horror.
If a brainy nerd goes to see a film designed to make J. Random-Punter think a bit and comes out disappointed, well, either you don't know yourself very well or you don't know Hollywood very well, one or the other. The fault doesn't lie in the film, it lies in your expectations.
It's not a hard or complex film if you have a brain, but it makes you think and work a bit more than, oh, a Bond film or Snakes on a Plane. This is what passes for intelligence in Hollywood. If that's not enough for you, watch something made in black and white for $10,000 with subtitles.
I saw no real links or resemblance to any of the Matrix films. It has no elements of virtual reality, computers, aliens or nasties or big baddies, battles or wars or rebellions or any real themes in common. (It is also lamentably short of martial arts and starlets in PVC and latex, but I do not feel that these are critical omissions.) Pointing out that it questions the nature of reality and so does the Matrix is a bit like saying that Four Weddings and a Funeral is a rip-off of Les Liaisons Dangereuses because they're both all about interpersonal relationships. "Jejune" is the word that springs to mind except I always feel like a pretentious character from a Woody Allen film when I use it.
Pros: Christopher Nolan, no 3D
Cons: Leonardo di Caprio, silly Plot Device™
Stars: 3½ out of 5
