Inception

[Mutagen]

Well, I really ended up liking this. For me, Nolan's style of being overly thinky and conceptual worked for this movie. And I appreciated that the movie avoided some very obvious cliches (really, I was expecting the supporting cast to get killed off one by one, the way most action movies would do it, and it felt really refreshing and not at all cheap that everyone was (seemingly) alive at the end of it). I don't know if I can say that I was "totally blown away" by this movie or anything, but it did really go above my expectations.

Acting-wise Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard were the standouts, IMHO, but everybody was good. Also I think Ellen Page deserves points for working with a pretty thankless role.

[Deleted]

Aug 2, 2010 9:13:12 GMT -4 Mutagen said:

Also I think Ellen Page deserves points for working with a pretty thankless role.

Agreed. She was basically the exposition fairy and those are damn hard to make interesting.

[Deleted]

Watched this on Saturday and I was glad I went into it not really knowing what to expect. The film was released here only three days ago so it was hard resisting this thread. ;-)
Anyway, I loved it and will definitely watch it again this week. I was so looking forward to this cast and nobody disappointed, though I think Leo was better in Shutter Island. But what's up with his characters' having crazy, murderous wives?
Cillian Murphy was great as were Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard. I read over the weeked that some people had difficulties understanding some of Watanabe's lines. Well guess what, they managed to find someone for the dubbed German version who was also difficult to understand at times!
As for the ending....>>.I don't know what to think, except that Mal truly looked "evil" at times. The fact that Cobb said to her in the beginning "I can't trust you anymore" makes me think that she was the one doing Inception on him. Now, how she did that and why and from where....I do not know <<

[bklynred]

Aug 2, 2010 11:41:42 GMT -4 @roisin54 said:

Aug 2, 2010 9:13:12 GMT -4 Mutagen said:

Also I think Ellen Page deserves points for working with a pretty thankless role.

Agreed. She was basically the exposition fairy and those are damn hard to make interesting.

I thought she did a great job with her role. Her confusion and frustration definitely reflected my own. And she made the exposition sound realistic, not wooden.

[Deleted]

I agree, she did a great job with the role and made it much more interesting than it was probably written to be. She is a very engaging performer and definitely has charisma.

[Sunbaby]

There's something I don't understand. Assuming that that the plane ride was in fact reality, wouldn't Fischer think it strange that his fellow passengers, whom he had just met in the case of Cobb and Eames, were in his dream? I know I'd be freaking out if I had an intense dream that featured people I had never met before but woke up next to.

I'm impressed that Marion Cotillard has the ability to turn her crazy eyes on and off.

Hans Zimmer's score was both intense and fantastic.

[Deleted]

It depends on how well he remembers the dream. With my dreams, and I understand it's like this for many other people as well, I remember the basic idea of it if not all the details. Also since he had seen them all before going to sleep it would make sense that the last faces he saw would appear in a dream.***

As an aside, I've had a dream within a dream within a dream with a dream before. It scared the hell out of me and I was really shaken up by the time I woke up, so despite the benign events in the dreams it qualified as a nightmare for me.

[huggingotters]

Ha! That's happened to me before a couple of times. I don't remember anything exciting happening in those dreams within dreams either but I always woke up so disconcerted. I've even had dreams where at some point I was aware it was a dream. The first few minutes within waking up were so confusing.

[angelaudie]

solly79, it's interesting you made that observation about Mal because in Spanish and French the word "mal" means "bad" or "evil". You might also use the word to say you are in great pain. Now, whether if the name was chosen for those reasons I have no idea. But, again, it is interesting!

Obviously, I saw this over the weekend and loved it. It did take a few minutes to figure out what was going on (it didn't help my theater was having sound issues) but once I caught on to what was happening it became easier to follow.

The cast was excellent though the stand outs for me were Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The movie really made me appreciate Ellen Page's talent since she somehow made her role as the exposition fairy (love that description!) not annoying. Not too many actors could pull that off.

The special effects were also rather impressive. The audience I was with did plenty of "ohhh!" and "awwwww" during the dream sequences. I'd say this film has an excellent chance of walking away with technical awards come award season if nothing else!

[sumire]

Didn't notice those details, but I did notice Saito's kimono-like shirt under his suit and I was very distracted (not in a bad way) by it! I was like, "Do people really do that? How does the shirt drape around the waistline? How does that work?" I'm half-Japanese so I was curious whether Japanese men really do this as a modification of Western business wear. It did look very cool.

I noticed his shirt, too! No, shirts like that are the creation of either movie costume designers or maybe avant-garde fashion designers--mundane, Western-style collared shirts are a veritable institution among Japanese men. And a normal contemporary kimono wouldn't be worn with that many layers showing at the neck.[/also half-Japanese] I wasn't specifically paying attention, but I'm thinking the kimono collar only appeared in Saito-centric dreams.

(OT: The opposite problem, but this reminds me of when I saw No Country For Old Men and thought it was clever and funny of the Coens to put Woody Harrelson in a business suit sewn with cowboy-shirt-style V's on the front of the shoulders, and my dad had to tell me that no, suits like that are a real thing.)

I'd only heard raves about the movie, so my expectations were too high--it was a good enough movie, but I ended up a little disappointed. OTOH, I only knew that Leonardo DiCaprio, JGL, Ellen Page, and Marion Cotillard were in it, so Ken Watanabe and the Japan scenes were a pleasant surprise, and the lovely Cillian Murphy and that Tom Hardy guy were total man-candy. (JGL also = man-candy, but he was expected man-candy, not bonus man-candy.)

I'm not sure if it's because my dad accidentally bought tickets for the superdeluxe screening that the movie was loud to the point of discomfort. As others have said, I found some of the dialogue unintelligible, although at the time, I just attributed it to too much other sound/music on the too-loud soundtrack.