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Is all I need to know.
I've only seen a handful of new films in theaters this year, but it's one of the best of the lot, along with Winter's Bone and Toy Story 3. (The best film I've seen in theaters this year, new or otherwise, is Hausu, an awesome Japanese freakout horror movie from the 70s that has been making the rounds in a new print [and will be coming out on DVD/blu-ray from Criterion in October]. It's like nothing else I've ever seen and is delightfully over-the-top.)
The actors all look too young? Cranky much? DiCaprio's 35, Gordon-Levitt is 29, Page is 23 (and plays a grad student), Hardy is 32, and Murphy is 34. All reasonable to be top professionals in a field that is quite likely to be dominated by a younger generation.
Regardless of how old they all look to you, their actual ages match up with a reasonable expectation of their characters' ages.
I've seen this complaint crop up a few times, but it's worth remembering that these aren't "dreams" in a typical sense - they are consciously designed by an architect (Page's character) which explains why they're pretty grounded. On the other hand, I wish they'd done more with the idea of paradoxes, instead of only using them for a throwaway gag and a one-liner by JGL.
*SPOILERS*
If you think about the premise: someone builds the dream world to allow the subject to fill it with his sub conscience. The subject has to believe the dream world location can be a real world, even if the subject has no direct memory of the location. If the subject realizes it's a dream, then the subject's sub conscience manifestations will become hostile towards the invaders.
I really liked the movie. As soon as it was over I wanted to go watch it again (still haven't). The only thing the movie was really missing was any kind of deep character development, which would have been difficult to fit into a standard summer movie time frame given the amount of rules the movie had to cover for the viewer.
I really liked the movie, and was invested in the DiCaprio character. I really like the way Nolan worked his deceased wife into the story - very inventive and in keeping with the psychological nature of the whole. However, I had a hard time with the speed with which Page's character signed on to the project, considering the out-of-left field nature of the project, and in general - I did have a hard time thinking she was old enough, with enough experience, to be that character. Part of that could be me connecting her to Juno in my mind.
Anyway, there are legit reasons to be underwhelmed with some details of the movie - but I will always support a feature film that is inventive and innovative even with some holes in the story/timeliine, etc. And, it thoroughly enjoyed the movie - more than anything I have seen since Dark Knight - except Toy Story 3...
But, as a composer, I wanted to throw an ice-pick through Hans Zimmer's head. What an awful score....
Like most, I'm familiar with Page from Juno, but even if I had not seen that...she just looked extremely young. It was to the point that I commented to my girlfriend that I felt uncomfortable in the scene where JGL's character kisses her.
It actually makes sense if you think about it a little deeper. For most people, everything they know about gun fights they've learned from watching action movies. With that in mind, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that the mooks from their subconscious would be graduates from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
Too convoluted and sucky to be any good. We left before it was half over.
And if you can't tell a story in under 2 hours, you've failed.
Yeah, Godfather III sucked. I will give you that.
FW(little)IW, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Page too young? She's 23 - how old do you think people are in grad school and/or making out?
The answer is option C: your taste in movies is perplexing and bizarre. :-)
EDIT: Also, given your last comment, I'll assume you think every serial TV drama and every novel longer than 100 pages sucks.
I'm still surprised people are able to sleep at the movies. You are sitting in a chair that's the size of a 3rd grader's desk, with a 100"+ screen flashing with bright lights and colors, and the audio is so loud it shakes your damn seat.
Maybe it would be fun to combine things and associate MLB players with movies. I nominate Mark Hendrickson as the "All About Steve" of left-handed pitching.
The O's are the Superbabies franchise of MLB?
Does that make the Pirates the Battlefield Earth?
You must be unfamiliar with the concept of "Natalie Portman."
While I am a huge Hans Zimmer fan, I have to admit that the score was not one of his best.
Be sure to watch the trailer!
That was kind of a one off. I was thinking more of horrible movies that for some reason spawn sequels. The Pirates may be The Ghouiles of MLB.
I'm not sure I agree here. What about it made it awful, to your ears? I do think it was engineered poorly, however, a bit over-the-top. And as long as we're talking scores, let's talk one more sci-fi one, John Murphy's from Sunshine. Thoughts?
I don't know if I was tired or if Inception really sucked, but the movie literally put me to sleep, so I'm guessing the latter.
Too convoluted and sucky to be any good. We left before it was half over.
This, or the Mets' loss last night, it's a tie for the least shocking thing in the history of the universe.
Ah. So in that case, the Battlefield Earth of baseball is the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.
It's not about her actual age. I'm 24. It's about how young she looked.
You're going to get an earful over this comment.
I would agree with this portion of Ray's post, not so sure about the rest. I felt DiCaprio *SPOILER ALERT* played a similar character in Shutter Island and was much more convincing. Maybe it was him, maybe it was the writing, but I cared in Shutter Island and I didn't care here.
Seems like the examples of this would be rather small. What films are you thinking?
On the whole, I liked "Inception", but I didn't think that it was transcendently great like some people do.
I think that my main objection was that Leo's character doesn't ever really karmically pay the price for his selfishness. He was willing to co-opt a brilliant, innocent student into an addictive life of brain-damaging crime and take a chance that all the other members of the gang would end up crazy/vegetablized in order to get what he wanted: seeing his kids. And at the end of the movie, he gets what he wants and everybody goes home, with no real scars or conseqences. There's no catharsis there (unless you assume that he's still in a dream, in which case it's an inadequate price). That was what made Memento so good - the knowledge that at the end, even Leonard is taking advantage of and manipulating himself.
The Rube Goldberg plot by Leo's wife also rang kind of false. If she really, truly believed that the world was a fake world, she wouldn't have left Leo a leg to stand on. She wouldn't have done all that #### with lawyers and the affidavits and stuff. She would've just killed the kids - given them poisoned milk or something. Then, he'd have no choice but to take a leap of faith with her, because the alternative would've been too terrible to contemplate. Of course, if that were what happened, we wouldn't have a movie...
On the plus side: Good acting, nice effects, and a clever, writer-ly script. I've definitely seen worse.
***END SPOILERS***
Memento wasn't emotionally involving? Are you made of stone?
I cared more here, because they blissfully avoided almost entirely the IS IT REAL OR IS IT ALL FAKE annoyance that plagued the entirety of Shutter Island. That alone makes my opinion of this film higher than normal. (I would also say that it was a great, significantly above-average film that wasn't quite by my opinion to a "brilliant" level. Why is the Chemist doing something so important as driving the damned van?)
Westside Story?
Naw, I kid! The Birds, for one. Then there are a lot of artsy/small films that I can't remember if they didn't have a score or if the score was just so small and unobtrusive I remember them now as if they didn't have a score. I prefer that for movies telling a smaller story.
The Best Years of Our Lives: 2 hours, 52 minutes
The Seven Samurai: 3 hours, 27 minutes
Amadeus: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Gone with the Wind: 3 hours, 58 minutes
The Godfather: 2 hours, 55 minutes
Pulp Fiction: 2 hours, 34 minutes
Children of Paradise: 3 hours, 10 minutes
Once Upon a Time in the West: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Goodfellas: 2 hours, 26 minutes
And, again, I really like DiCaprio's acting; his performances in The Departed and Catch Me If You Can, to name two, were outstanding.
Sátántangó: 7 hours, 12 minutes.
(And amazing, but I doubt most would agree with me.)
Not sure that I really cared a great deal about Leo's character in either movie, but Shutter Island was awful. Butchered by a director who wrapped everything up in a neat little package and handed it to an audience he assumed was too stupid to handle or appreciate ambiguity or uncertainty. Maybe he was right in that assumption, but it's not like Shutter Island was a blockbuster as it stands. Should have taken a chance and made something memorable.
It insists upon itself?
Some of the others were great, but needlessly long. Godfather, for example, could have snipped most of the Sicily scene. And there was plenty to snip in Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. Though all three of these movies are among my favorites, so I suppose I should amend my "failed" language.
I think Leo played a much better & convincing character in Shutter Island, but the movie was not as good. I'm not sure if Shutter Island was a terrible idea, or just poorly executed, but the "twist" could be seen from the first 10-15 min of the movie.
As far as movies with terrible scores, I hated the score in There Will Be Blood. The movie and Day Lewis were phenomenal, but the score was very obtrusive.
Awful was probably too strong. Here is what I wrote in a FB discussion with some students and a friend who composes for TV/Film...
Those are my words - I've only seen it once and generally liked all of the action scenes - but just felt like some of the small parts of the movie could have been done with more subtlety. The ending scene - trying to avoid spoilers - is much more poignant that the music allows. The action themes are still pounding away.
I'll see it again and have a better opinion - but I was conscious of the music not connecting to the images a few times - it was always centered around the quiet times of the movie.
I'll check out that Murphy score - I don't know it...
True. Everything in the movie was of the movie. There was nothing in the movie that wasn't of the movie. Anything that might have been without, once shown, was suddenly in. The movie was just the movie and nothing but the movie.
It insists upon itself?
I enjoyed The Money Pit.
I love the tv/movie threads Ray participates in as he slowly makes everyone nuts.
Chinatown: 2 hours, 10 minutes
This is fun!
The reason the dream worlds aren't dreamy is because they have the dream like quality that they SEEM real while you are in them. In a regular movie dream sequence, you make it "dreamy" to contrast from the real world... But in Inception ALL the worlds are dreamworlds, so they are most equally realistic (except maybe limbo, which is the world you enter when you realoize you are dreaming but cannot wake up??)
Couldn't get past the cat scene. Sorry.
Too many notes?
I think Toy Story 3 would have been better if SPOILER they would have been destroyed in the furnace. That was the perfect ending, if not the friendly-to-children one (so I get why it wasn't). They had come to terms with their mortality and would be going out in the presence of true friends.
I mean, they'll all perish one day. I'm not happier knowing that they'll probably be picked off one by one as time wears on.
The Deer Hunter. Great the way it is, could be better if trimmed a bit, or both? And why?
I agree, but that would have been the ballsiest movie ending ever. It would have blown the end of Ol' Yeller out of the water for making children cry hysterically. I imagine there would have been lawsuits and angry, frumpy women screaming at the top of their lungs on the various cable news programs.
Speaking of people who do not know when to end a movie...Steven freaking Spielberg (and off the top of my head, Minority Report).
If it is trimmed, does Heaven's Gate happen?
Oh, sure on both counts. But there's something beautiful on going out both accomplished and resigned. It would have been the most dignified combustion ever. The anti-Hindenburg.
Hard to say. Cimino still went crazy when they tried to have him film Footloose, so probably.
It was probably the greatest moment of my life.
Had you just ripped one?
Minority Report is so much better if you assume that everything that happens after Cruise being put in mind jail is one of the wish-fulfillment dreams/visions that they talk about people in mind jail having earlier in the film.
It also solves the question of how he got his original eyes back when they show him accidentally dropping one into the sewer. And the trite ending with everything resolved becomes instead a brilliant skewering of the trope.
Though I see what Costanza saw in Marisa Tomei.
Inception was a good movie that tried to do too much. It tried to be a psychological thriller, a mind screw, and a summer blockbuster all rolled into one. It couldn't quite pull it all off seamlessly. I think the thing that bothered me most is that the weaponized subconsciousness attended the Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship while people who had little obvious shooting or driving skills in real life were crack shots and wheelmen.
I was listing a variety of genres so that everyone would (likely) see one or more "overlong" movies they appreciated. As indeed you did.
Ray, #43: And, again, I really like DiCaprio's acting; his performances in The Departed and Catch Me If You Can, to name two, were outstanding.
The Departed: 2 hours, 31 minutes
Catch Me If You Can: 2 hours, 21 minutes
re [38] - could one make the case that he earns redemption for himself by staying behind and giving Juno the kick so she can rejoin the real world, then (inexplicably and off-panel) finding a way to navigate himself down another level to face down his own demons and rescue Watanabe?
There was nothing "convoluted" about Inception. It walked you straight down the line, thorugh plot levels, with hand-holding bordering on the childish. If you couldn't follow the action and story of Inception you are probably brain damaged or something. It's your standard game "level 1, level 2, level 3, big boss level" construct.
Felt the same way.
Worked for me. I think that's surely the intention.
do not know when to end a movie
The Nolan film that won't end is The Prestige. Maybe shorter than Inception, but completely exhausting.
I think he went after Watanabe because if he didn't, Watanabe wasn't going to be able to phone the authorities and keep him from getting arrested. As such, it seems like he was continuing to act out of selfishness rather than paying a karmic debt.
I mean, cripes. He didn't even kill his own wife-projection! He let the intern do it for him instead!
That movie is ####### great.
It sucks compared to the book.
Haven't seen Inception, but generally I've noticed that films derided as convoluted or overly complex generally fall into two types:
1: They were not convoluted or "complex"- the reviewer is moron.
2: The film is not convoluted or complex- the film simply lacks any internal consistency because the filmmakers were idiots- in which case a reviewer might actually be trying to be kind when he says the film is convoluted- he's saying that ok it might make sense if you untie everything...
Lies.
That movie is ####### great.
QFT.
3: The film is Primer.
Yeah, I liked it, but "convoluted"/"complex" is absolutely a fair cop there.
Nice work- particularly on a Monday morning.
Sam, I guess I need to challenge you to a fistfight now.
The actual source material was the episode of "House" where Dr House gets shot by Moriarty.*
* The scene in "Inception" where Leo and Ellen Page are dreaming at the French bistro was straight from "House," including the Brechtian/metafictional reveal.
House is going over the case with his team from his bed in the ICU. He says they need to go down to the lab to run some more tests. The very next shot is of them walking down the stairs to get to the lab. As they're walking, House pauses and says, "How did I get here? I was in the ICU, and then I was coming down these stairs with you guys. What happened in between? I don’t remember how I got here." And that's how he realizes he's dreaming/hallucinating.
I think it's a cool trick--having the character talk about the artificial necessities of film to realize the artificial nature of his own existence. It's less subtle than the scene in "Persona" where, in the middle of the scene, the camera cuts back to the crew who is filming it...but still. I like seeing French New Wave sensibilities in my pop tv shows and summer sci-fi blockbusters. ;)
Now this is QFT. Primer is extremely convoluted and complex, to the point where the characters have no idea what's going on at the end. That's what makes it such a great time travel movie.
No, just stop saying things that are actually quite simple are "convoluted" or "complex." To put it another way, at what point in the plot of Inception did you get so confused as to lose the line of "reality?"
I don't need you to like the film, or even have enjoyed it. The world needs fans of "Next Friday" too. But to say you didn't like it due to a complexity that wasn't really there suggests you never even bothered to try.
Sorry for the delay, I had work to do. Anyway it was not very emotionally involving for me because all of the characters are ... not good people in very strong ways. I don't mean flawed, I mean really crappy humans. Sure the wife bit (seems a theme with Nolan) was very intense and was involving at the time, but by the end of the movie it was an almost pure intellectual enjoyment for me.
Don't get me wrong I love his movies (Dark Knight is my favorite, but I have enjoyed them all), but then are not very emotionally involving for me. But yeah I am kind of analytical, so maybe a bit made of stone.
---
I am jealous. Filled with envy. That is so awesome. May you be blessed with an estate sale completely populated by others who can not see the light.
--
Too many notes. Very nice!
Actually, I agree with a lot of this. Nolan is my favorite working director, and I generally enjoy movies much more when I'm emotionally involved. And Memento is one of my favorite movies.
However, I never really felt emotionally connected to Leonard.
I did get an emotional connection to DiCaprio's character in Inception. And both main characters in The Prestige. Memento connects on an analytical and intellectual level for me, though, not an emotional one.
19 out of 20 times my wife and I decide to go to the movies we can't find anything even remotely worth seeing, and we end up watching something from the 40's or 50's from NetFlix.
Whenever we end up watching one of the "acclaimed" movies (Oscar winners and nominees), more times than not it's awful, and when I like them, they're OK, not great.
It's tough to say; the film put me to sleep before I had a chance to consciously lose the reality line. By the time I woke up, I had lost it.
Maybe you just dreamed that the movie sucked.
They are awful, snapper. I don't care if this sounds douchey or not, but I think the French make better films than we do. Or, we make better spectacles, but they make better character driven or idea driven films. So, for me, the trick is to not limit myself to American movies. (Of course I'm oversimplifying here, but I think it's a good rule of thumb. American movies are made for teenagers and French movies for adults.)
Personally, I felt more and more emotionally connected to Leonard (and everyone else) as the movie went along, and he became (like all the other characters) progressively less innocent and more self-serving. I agree that they're mostly a group of really crappy people doing selfish things to take advantage of Leonard, but for me, that made them easier to understand and empathize with. Natalie loved a bad person, and the fact that he made money doing bad things didn't make her love him any less. Her grief and redirected rage were totally genuine and totally understandable for anyone who's ever been in that kind of relationship. Teddy started out trying to help Leonard because he felt sorry for him and nobody else would, and he got sucked into this never-ending cascade of drama and constant petty inconveniences, and eventually he got fed up with dealing with it (it never stopped, even after the killed the guy!) and started making morally compromised choices out of long-term irritation. Who hasn't been there? That's Family 101. And the way that Leonard was willing to lie to himself in order to see himself as the kind of person that he wanted to be, even to the point of basically setting Teddy up to be killed over what was basically a fit of pique? That made him the most human as all.
Bad people casually doing bad things to each other out of quiet desperation is the essence of not only film noir, but also a lot of day-to-day life. Or that's how I see it, anyway.
Another thing I liked about Inception is that the gadgetry was just sort of shown to you, not made a fetish of. Apparently there's this device with a plunger in the middle of it that starts everyone dreaming. Nobody bothers to explain it because it's a Ghostbusters machine to start with; who cares? They just push the plunger and enjoy the results.
Now I must go back to chasing those #### kids off my lawn.
They make good thrillers and good melodramas, but you know the famous definition of a French sex comedy: a movie that is neither sexy nor funny.
Are you still interested in modern films, even if you don't like them? Maybe we can suggest something with that kind of sensibility. What are some '40s/'50s movies that you like?
This house is across the street from my in-laws, so I'm in the know in terms of what's going on with this lady's house. Apparently, she also has a giant safe in the basement. She's an heirless child of a couple who had massive $$$ from a career w/ Eli Lilly. My babysitter has actually seen this Stargate set, and said it is big and incredibly elaborate.
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