This is the movie that everyone has been waiting to see this year.  After Christopher Nolan did The Dark Knight a couple years ago everyone has been waiting with baited breathe for the next film in the Batman trilogy, however Nolan decided – just as he did with the previous Batman instalment – to take a break away from the world of comic books and bring us into this new original science-fiction heist film that he’s apparently been working on from birth (or something like that).  This movie takes the heist genre and decides to bring it into the world of the dream.  In the art of espionage the effectiveness of an agent is measured by how reliable the information is that’s at his fingertips, well how much more reliable can you get when you’re stealing the information directly from the subject’s subconscious while he’s sleeping.  This is the world that we’re thrust into in the film Inception.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) must assemble a team of thieves and other skilled misfits to complete this last job that will get him what he’s been fighting for a long time to get; a chance to return to his family.  This job requires him to plant an idea in the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) – the heir to the biggest energy competitor to the client, Saito (Ken Watanabe) – that will make him dissolve his father’s empire.  In order for them to complete this mission they must achieve the disastrously dangerous feat of ‘great depth’ which is a three layered dream – i.e. a dream within a dream within a dream – as they try to fool Fischer into believing this idea came from him.

This movie works on so many levels that it’s impossible not to love.  The grandness of the idea and how the dream world is executed is how this film separates it from the rest of those dream sequences you’ve seen before. When you think of standout dream scenes in film you’re always treated to absurd scenes where the filmmaker is always pointing out how ridiculous the world is.  Here however, Nolan decides to create worlds that are impossible but at the same time modelled off the real world so that he can trick us – and the mark – into believing that it’s real, which makes it even more amazing when we end up experiencing unrealistic things in this seemingly real world.

Nolan quickly introduces us to the idea of ‘shared dreaming’ where a dreamer creates a world and allows another person to enter it and bring in their secrets.  Unlike most filmmakers which have to do what I call narrated storytelling, where they have to narrate the entire introduction by telling us exactly what is going on as we are watching it, he trusts us to figure out that this world that we’re in initially is a dream and that Cobb and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are on a job to steal a mark’s secrets.  We, as the audience, are then lead to build a list of rules on our own as we progress through the film which makes for a very thought provoking experience that you won’t want to end.

One complaint that I’ve heard from some people is that they didn’t like how the film decided to change a lot of the rules that they introduced early in the film.  For example, early in the film we learn that when you’re killed in the dream world you wake up in the real world, but in the job there becomes this huge consequence for dying.  Why I loved this was even though that it technically was cheating on the filmmaker’s part that it allows for this job to become even more high risk and tense for our thieves.  If you can’t be caught then the act of the heist becomes more video game like and we can just press the reset button whenever we please.  This is probably the only element of the story that allows itself to tailor its very unique concept into an already chiselled genre of bank (or in this case mind) heists.

What this movie does well though is that it gives us this grand world that we’ve never seen represented in this fashion on screen before.  Where instead of having a head filled with random thoughts and ideas represented as a dream we’re having people actively creating real representations of worlds into mazes.  I actually lost sight of how important the maze aspect of the film was, because I forgot about how the projections work as the mark’s defense mechanism and how Cobb and his team utilized the maze as the blueprint for the world that they allow the subject to enter so to give them as much time as possible to complete any given job.

People all like to bicker about the ending of the film and whether it was a dream or not.  Earlier this year I reviewed DiCaprio’s other movie Shutter Island and applauded it for its distinct clear ending.  Here however, is the complete opposite.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and even though most try to use evidence from the film to base their decision on whether the end is one thing or another the truth of the matter is that unless I watch the film a few more times I won’t know for sure, but I know what I want it to be and that’s what it’ll be until I prove it further.  A film like this can’t become a load of garbage because the filmmaker decided to make me think about it at the very last minute.  What I got from is that the journey of the beginning to the end is way more important than what the actual end was.  It’s a film that you’re going to want to see numerous times and spend hours dissecting all the aspects of its brilliance.

IMDB says 9.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 87%

I say 10/10

This week I tell Damion about my split personality as we discuss this STV release Peacock.

Show Notes

What We Watched
Damion [00:02:13]: Army of Darkness, Trick r Treat, The Losers
Andrew [00:10:42]: Tetro, The Searchers

News
Joseph Gordon Levitt in talks to join Looper [00:19:56]
Hugo Weaving confirmed as Red Skull in Capt. America [00:21:49]
Sam Rockwell cast in Cowboys and Aliens [00:26:08]
David O. Russell to direct UNCHARTED [00:28:32]

Trailers
Get Low [00:30:41]
Jonah Hex [00:34:39]
Piranha3D [00:41:54]
The American [00:45:40]

Review: Peacock (2010) [00:48:05]

Thanks for listening and feel free to let us know what you think either through the comments below or email us here.  You can subscribe to the podcast via our RSS, The Podcast Alley or iTunes.  It would be awesome if you would rate/review us on iTunes (we’ll read your reviews on the show.  You can also catch us broadcast the show live every Wednesday night at 10PMEST on ustream.

This week Damion tells us the tale of how he was abducted by aliens while I tell him the truth as we review Gregg Araki‘s Mysterious Skin.

Show Notes

What We Watched:
Damion [00:01:50]: Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut, Why We Laugh, Defendor, Kick-Ass, The Fifth Element, The Big Hit, Zombieland, Peacock, Justified
Andrew [00:16:13]: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Patton, This is Spinal Tap

Discuss: Top 5 Breakout Performances [00:23:26]

News:
Jack Nicholson in LAST Vegas [00:33:54]
Ghost Rider 2 without Nick Cage? [00:37:10]
Woody Allen details on Midnight in Paris [00:39:55]
TV shows dying [00:45:42]

Trailers:
The Disappearance of Alice Creed [00:48:25]
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse [00:51:18]

Review: Mysterious Skin [00:58:06]

Additional Notes:
Boiling Point: Stay on Target

Thanks for listening and feel free to let us know what you think either through the comments below or email us here.  You can subscribe to the podcast via our RSS, The Podcast Alley or iTunes.  It would be awesome if you would rate/review us on iTunes (we’ll read your reviews on the show.  You can also catch us broadcast the show live every Wednesday night at 10PMEST on ustream.

This week our hosts are joined by Jack Giroux from TheFilmStage.com and AtomicPopcorn.net to discuss the latest of the halloween genre that has found it’s way on DVD, Trick R Treat.

Show Notes

Guest: Jack Giroux from TheFilmStage.com and AtomicPopcorn.net

What We Watched
[00:01:38] Jack: Where the Wild Things Are, The Assassination of a High School President, Law Abiding Citizen
[00:05:58] Damion: Saw, Last House on the Left, Midnight Meat Train, The Transporter Trilogy, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
[00:16:46] Andrew: Drunken Master, Thief, Funny People, Traffic

News

Rumor: Ivan Reitman attached to direct Ghostbusters 3? [00:26:31]
Ellen Page writes Stich n’ Bitch [00:32:03]
Retelling of the story of Moses… in 300 style??? [00:35:31]

Trailers

Toy Story 3 [00:41:29]
Me and Orson Welles [00:49:30]
Uncertainty [01:01:19]

Review: Trick R Treat [01:08:24]

Additional Links

What I took Away from the Toy Story 3

Once again I’d like to thank all you for listening and feel free to leave me any feedback in the comments or via email at unnamed[AT]gmanreviews[DOT]com.  You can subscribe to the podcast via the RSS, The Podcast Alley or iTunes.  We broadcast the podcast live on ustream every Wednesday night at 10PM EST, feel free to tune in and chat with us live there.

Tom Hansen [Joseph Gordon-Levitt] works as at a greeting card company and his boss just got a new assistant, Summer Finn [Zooey Deschanel], that he falls in love with at first sight.  The movie takes u through the 500 days of Tom’s life with Summer, including the ups and downs.  The best way to summarize this movie is a story about love, but it isn’t a love story.

Since certain films I don’t get to see in theatres for a long while – if at all – I find myself always playing catch up and being hyped for films before walking in.  As much as I refuse to read proper reviews for films before I’ve seen it myself I’ll always read people’s small comments on twitter on see the glorified titles in my rss feed reader as I skip through all the posts they make every day.  So to say that this movie’s reputation preceded itself is maybe being coy.  However, I must agree 100% with critics that I’ve heard from on this movie.  This is one of the best movies of the year, and currently sits #1 on my list of top films of 2009.

For some reason I see every reason why someone would call this a romantic comedy, however I don’t think of this as one at all.  This is a romantic film told from the perspective of Tom and the 500 days of his life which consist of him falling in and out of love with Summer.  I love not only the moments which are sweet and charming but also the depressing sad times with Tom being crushed and eventually getting over her.  There are moments in the movie which were totally over fantasized by Tom, especially the great moments when everything was great between the two of them, but at the same time I kind of accepted it as fact because it was such a joy to experience the story through his thoughts.  The kicker in the movie for me was how we perceive the ending of relationship, we’re thrown into the middle of the story and am not sure what really happened and feel almost as dumbfounded as Tom as to why Summer decides to end it and then we’re treated to some depressing moments that can only be compared to the wonderful film from 2000 High Fidelity.

Marc Webb incorporates the correct amount of sweet and salty to bring us the correct flavour that tastes just right in a movie which will, I hope, show all the other generic romantic comedies what they can really be.  His use of time shifting in the film is wonderful in helping us understand every moment that occurs for Tom as he jumps from day 1 to day 255 and further throughout the film.  For all those out there who have gotten tired of the now mundane romcom that comes out every two to three months in the theatre this is for you.  Even if you’ve never had your heart broken there is a lot to relate to in the movie and you can empathize with Tom as he goes through his depression in the later part of these 500 days.

The perfect topping on this movie was the addition of Tom’s little sister, Rachel [Chloe Moretz], who plays the role of the honest female voice for Tom.  It is down right hilarious that a 10 year old is giving Tom insight into the female mind and also helping him cope with his dolor.

In the end I have to say that this movie is perfect in my eyes and I can’t wait to see it again.  I loved everything about this movie and I hope you do too.

IMDB says 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 87%

I say 10/10