Step 1: Get your serious brain-wrapping skills ready. It’s a little difficult to fully understand Inception — but you won’t have any trouble being wowed by the certain to-be-Oscar-nominated visuals.
Step 2: Don’t try and dissect the film’s plot too much. It would ruin it for those who should experience Inception with a clean slate, but I’ll just give you the basics. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an entrepreneur named Cobb who operates a small band of consultants, who, for a price, can go into other people’s dreams and “extract” information. There’s the architect (Ellen Page), the forger (Tom Hardy), the kicker (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the chemist (Dileep Rao) — all trained to do their jobs well. It’s never quite explained how they are trained (except for newbie Page), but we just assume it’s something they can do. The inception part in Inception is a little trickier, and frankly, more confusing, to explain. Suffice to say, it’s a technique to go deep within the subconscious to plant an idea. To get that deep, however, you’ve gotta be super prepared because you’re going to be knee-deep in some pretty crazy maze-like, dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream shit — and it isn’t very easy to get out.
Step 3: Marvel that man. Oh, how I love the way writer/director Christopher Nolan brain works. Most audiences know him as the Dark Knight guy, and while I appreciated his take on the Batman series, I remember him for his entirely unique Memento, his mind-twisty brainchild he made in 2000. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie quite like Memento, in which the story is basically told backwards, from ending to beginning, and Inception comes from THAT Nolan mind set. Except this time, the director has learned a few things about crafting a thrilling actioner as well, and so combines both the head games AND the car chases. I mean, there are some seriously intense action scenes in this film, especially the climactic “kick” sequence.
Step 4: Learn to adapt. The Inception performers also fit well within the Nolan milieu. The oh-so-serious DiCaprio is playing a variation of his character in Shutter Island, with the same tragic past. Page continues her streak of picking unique projects, as the studious and eager dream architect trainee. Gordon-Levitt cleans up well, looking dapper as DiCaprio’s No. 2 guy — and he gets to engage in the coolest fight sequence, like, ever. British actor Hardy (RocknRolla) is a refreshing diamond in the rough as the charismatic forger. As for the other key players, Ken Watanabe exudes a regal air as Cobb’s employer; Cillian Murphy plays it straight as the “mark”; and the lovely Marion Cotillard embodies the women who quite literally haunts Cobb’s dreams. A few may see Oscar nominations down the road.
Step 5: Win Oscars! Obviously, when you’re dealing with a film about dreams, anything can and will happen, and Nolan fully embraces that idea with stunning camera angles and special effects. Inception will be viewed as an early Oscar contender, that is a certainty — and at the very least, it should sweep many of the technical nominations come Oscar time, from visual to sound to cinematography. If there’s only one criticism about Inception, it would be how bleak and nearly soulless it can be at times. You are drawn in by the characters, yet it’s hard to feel for them. I firmly believe that is Nolan’s intentions. He’s not out to make a warm and fuzzy film, and I respect that because the rest of the film is simply a marvel in inventiveness.
Level of difficulty in watching Inception: Refer to my opening line. And the ending will leave you debating in that glass half full, half empty kind of way. Let’s just say, it’s a movie that needs to be seen more than once.
Step 1: Listen up, all aspiring 3D filmmakers: Pay attention to what James Cameron has done with his truly spectacular looking Avatar. This, my friends, is the right way to create a 3D film experience.
and her team are plugged into cylinder machines, their Na’vi look-a-likes walk among the tribe. Things get dicey, however, when paraplegic Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) shows up as the newest member of the scientific team. The gung-ho military leader Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) zeroes in on Jake and convinces him to gather intel on the tribe while he is one of them. He agrees – but then Jake experiences his first real avatar excursion and is hooked. He begins bonding with the Na’vi people, who decide to train him to become a warrior, and eventually falls in love with the beautiful Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), his teacher. When Jake starts to side with the Na’vi, Quaritch takes matter into his own destructive hands. You can see where this is going, right?
form of digital 3D filmmaking with Ghost of the Abyss and now Avatar. While he may lack a certain pizazz as a screenwriter, his what must be obsessive-compulsive perfectionism in making Avatar a groundbreaking feat in filmmaking astounds you. Beyond just placing the audience “in the moment” with the 3D technology, Cameron manages to create this world of Pandora around you so exquisitely, you can almost touch it. It’s lush, mossy green, quiet, explosive, filled with sights (giant rainbow-colored flying birds, hairless dogs) and sounds (the Na’vi’s rebel yell). This guy deserves SOME kind of an award for this remarkable achievement – and with his recent Golden Globe nomination and possible Oscar nod, he may get it. Again.
Step 1: Chalk this one up to bad timing. After all the other animated CGI films this year, Planet 51 just feels like a rehash, and not nearly as charming as it wants to be.
