posted
I thought it was shite, but I might be in the minority.
I mean... *SPOILER ALERT* ...nothing fucking happens, does it?
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
I thought it was very good.
I usually like Christopher Nolan's stuff and wasn't disappointed.
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Octavia
I hate Valentine's Day. Stupid commercialised crap
posted
quote:Originally posted by dang65: in the minority
Yes. It was easy to follow while it was happening, with enough questions left at the end to keep you thinking over the next couple of days. It was intelligent, funny, action-packed, had pretty-looking people in it, played by some jolly good actors, was well directed, looked spectacular and will probably be up for some Oscars. What do you want from a movie?
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quote:Originally posted by Octavia: What do you want from a movie?
Originality really. What happens in this film is that a scenario is put in place and then populated with exactly the same characters, special effects, CGI and cliches as pretty much any other blockbuster movie you can think of, but without any tension whatsoever. They had to use nearly an hour of pounding dramatic music to create that illusion. The music just went on and on. God knows what deaf people make of it. They wouldn't have a clue that anything dramatic was meant to be happening.
It was impossible to feel sympathy for any of the characters. Were we supposed to feel sorry for di Caprio's character, trying to get back to his children, or to thoroughly dislike him for helping a greedy multi-billionaire to destroy his competitor's company? Why did the girl architecture student quite cheerfully join in with all this corruption? Why was lovely old professor Michael Caine quite happy to get her involved in the first place?
The whole thing is just idiotic and falls to pieces as soon as you think about any part of it.
What it does do is makes you sit in a cinema for 2.5hrs trying to concentrate on what's happening, and that alone is attracting a lot of people to this film. Which is just sad. When you take away the challenge of thinking, you're left with total blandness on the screen. It's interesting that people are talking about going to see this film a few times so they can really "get it". That's going to really quickly become a horrible nightmare. Although I was actually craving a horrible nightmare by the time I got to the end of the film, just to cheer me up a bit.
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posted
I was going to watch this earlier this week but we went to see Toy Story 3 instead, which I really can't recommend enough.
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Octavia
I hate Valentine's Day. Stupid commercialised crap
posted
quote:Originally posted by dang65: a lot of words I entirely disagree with
though. I want to come back and explain why I liked it so much but haven't got time right now because I have to cook Thorn's supper.
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posted
Well, I fucking loved it. I was totally entranced the whole way through, didn't want to take my eyes off the screen for a moment to find the bottle of massively overpriced juice that I'd knocked off my lap onto the floor of the cinema, and was worried about needing to take a slash at some point because of the large glass of coca cola I'd had in the Nandos before the movie (it's ok, my bladder performed well).
I can see how if you don't accept the central conceit of the film you may not enjoy it, after the movie I was thinking "but would that really work like that?" but I bought into it at the time and found Christopher Nolans vision of the subconscious mind fascinating.
I was surprised at how 'hollywood' he went with the effects, you can see this is a big budget film and I was grateful that I made the effort to go to the cinema to experience it. The music made me want to check out the end credits to find out who was responsible for it - but in a good way (Hans Zimmer FYI).
I don't want to talk about anything that may spoil the film for others, and I find it hard to do film reviews without dropping in key scenes from the film so I'll leave it there.
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quote:What happens in this film is that a scenario is put in place and then populated with exactly the same characters, special effects, CGI and cliches as pretty much any other blockbuster movie you can think of, but without any tension whatsoever.
Is this entirely fair? The CGI was quite sparsely used - and for things that really couldn't be done in any other way. Things like Paris folding up over itself didn't seem familiar from other films. Certainly not in the same league as 'creature-roars-into-camera-with-wobbling-shops-and-flecks-of-spittle' that seems to be in every trailer for a CGI blockbuster. Other non-cgi FX like the gravity shifting round the corridor didn't seem familiar at all and were freakin' awesome.
I'm in two minds about whether you could describe it as cliched. It did rely a lot on the structure of a heist movie, but this seemed more like a twist on a genre than just a redeployment of cliches. The fact that all this was set in a dream-world with its own rules elevated it from the realm of cliche, for me - the use of genre conventions seemed like a canny way of making the film easy to navigate for the viewer, rather than lazy film-making.
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posted
I've had a think about this over the weekend, and also listened to the Kermode and Mayo podcast and the emails from their listeners.
Inception is obviously a massively popular film which is having a mindblowing effect on a lot of people. I mean, many of them are describing it as the greatest film they've ever seen (and they've watched it twice or more already in a lot of cases), and comparing the final scene to the perfection of Citizen Kane (which I've never watched, oops).
So, my conclusion is that I should just shut up really. I mean, the 5Live programme did have comments from a couple of listeners which were very similar to mine, so there are a few of us who are seeing the emperor with no clothes on. But if most people are loving it then it must be us who are missing the... wonder of it all, I suppose.
If I persist in picking holes in such a popular movie then I'm just going to be irritating (more irritating, that is), so I'll zip it.
Inception did make me think slightly differently about a story I'm sort of playing about with myself at the moment. At first I was thinking, man, I've got to make this more complicated. Now I'm thinking, don't be so ridiculous. But be prepared for a wave of wilfully awkward film storylines as script writers desperately try to give people the frisson of just about managing to understand something a bit difficult. Like I got when I answered a question off of University Challenge once.
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Why was lovely old professor Michael Caine quite happy to get her involved in the first place?
Cobb said The Architect was only meant to design the levels and teach them to the dreamers, that's all. The professor is the grandfather of Cobb's children so he has a vested interest in getting Cobb back with his kids. Cobb uses this to convince him to help, along with "you remember, the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities, things that couldn't have exist in the real world" etc.Posts: 1641
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posted
I was thinking of changing my faceberk profile to something like "Turned out not to be 'Love' but just some stupid crush, instead" but decided against it on the grounds that it was insensistive, and that also people might not get it. Also, I the chance that one of my 'friends' that I added just because their name rang a bell or something might know someone who died there. What do you all reckon?
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posted
When you balance the statistical likelihood of someone you know knowing someone who got killed in the crush against how likely someone you know is to get the joke, the chances of offending someone in your group of facebook friends is low. So I say go for it.
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quote:Originally posted by Cherry In Hove: I have no idea what it means
Thorn is trying to assess the potential amusement of making a joke about the recent deaths of 19 people at the Love Parade in Germany on his Facebook profile, when it may turn out that one of his "friends" knows someone who died there.
Statistically, it's orders of magnitude safer than making a cancer joke.
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posted
Cherry, have you still not been to the cinema since Dodgeball? I remember you mentioning this a while back. I was wondering whether something awful happened (apart from the same awful thing that happened to everyone who watched Dodgeball) which meant you just couldn't bring yourself to go back.
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posted
I don't think I have. Unless the first LOTR came out after dodgeball which I don't think it did. So still Dodgeball is probably the last film I saw at the cinema.
Nothing bad happened, I just don't find the cinema the best way to be entertained. It's alright but I'd rather go to the pub.
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posted
When I went to see Inception, there was a group of american teenagers at the front who kept doing stupid laughing (based on the Toy Story 3 ad that ran before the film) and making stupid noises throughout. It was never quite enough that it seemed to warrant yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" across the cinema, but it was enough to be distracting. I saw them again outside, and one of them was saying "That was so funny I think I was laughing the loudest or some such" and one said "yeah, that was great", and I thought "fuck this" and said "It was really fucking irritating - you ruined the film for a lot of people sitting behind you." The look on their faces was priceless. They looked gutted. A brilliant, brilliant moment. So that's something you don't get in the pub - the opportunity to righteously bully 14-year-old Americans.
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posted
Anyone seen a "Wait, whose subconscious are we going into exactly?" t-shirt yet? There must be geek millions to be made in flogging those down the market.
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It was impossible to feel sympathy for any of the characters. Were we supposed to feel sorry for di Caprio's character, trying to get back to his children, or to thoroughly dislike him for helping a greedy multi-billionaire to destroy his competitor's company?
What? WHAT?! The idea of dream control is so deeply tragic that we learn that anyone who gets involved with is has a midas touch effect. The more you want to inhabit the dream world, the less you actually dream. Anyone touched by the technology is ultimately a slave to it. It's such a tantalising prospect, but something that ultimately leads to something you are compelled to do. We should really hate Cobb for getting Ariadne involved, but he knows the lure of the technology is enough. She leaves when she finds out about it....and then returns. It's also a bit of a trick on the audience because Ariadne's character is our own pursuit of knowledge, she's asking the questions the audience ask as they are confused by the intro.
It's not just a corporate feud, when you consider their next move that Fischers company will make will make the company a global superpower. Saito has his architect murdered simply for being a turncoat, he could of easily had Cobb offed, but he needs him to do it. He knows the threat of death will get him nowhere, but the threat of allowing him to see his kids again?
As Tilde says, Cobb's Father introduced his son to it and clearly doesn't blame his son for Mal's death (unlike say, his own Mother)
The film doesn't even have to go into the apparent existentialist side of it. I like the 'are we still dreaming' aspect of it, but I like to think the ending is a kind of in-joke, a nod to the existentialist nature of films like Shutter Island and Existenz et al. To ask if Cobb is in Limbo, another layer above below or awake. It's a cheeky move, but in the context of the film, a total get-out clause. The main most important driving point of the film is a small but subtle point: can you plant an idea into another persons mind? Cobb dreams of his childrens faces, but he can never see them, so he has to wake up to reality, he has to let go of his memories of Mal, or 'je ne regrette rien' to see his kids again.
I rarely say this, but the pacing, acting, style and effects are hardly over the top. They serve the purpose. The multiple kicks are like one giant cresendo, answering the question 'can you place a thought into another mans mind' - it's fantastic. Bricks got shat. Minds got blown. Ellen Page went in the diddy wank-bank. I ...don't know what else to say.
[ 27.07.2010, 05:15: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
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though. I want to come back and explain why I liked it so much but haven't got time right now because I have to cook Thorn's supper.
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