Dreams within dreams, within dreams, within a well-constructed movie labyrinth; "Inception" is a movie lover's paradise

"INCEPTION" ☆☆☆☆

I didn't expect anything out of "The Dark Knight" when it was released two summers ago. At least, not anything spectacular.

I was at work opening day, and my friend had phoned me vigorously until I finally picked up on break, in a bathroom stall. He said he had just seen it the night before, at Thursday midnight (breaking an arrangement we had to see it together), and excitedly stated that once I got off shift that we must go and see it, must, right then, not a second sooner. For him to bathe in movie honor again, for me to go to the best moviegoing experience of my life (for him, anyway). He also didn't leave out that it was the best, the best, movie he had ever seen. Several times, in fact. And several times more on the car ride over to the theater. Even then, sitting in what was a packed movie house at early morning, my expectations weren't all too high. I had wanted to see "The Dark Knight" - the new, then second and highly-anticipated Batman movie proclaimed a comic-book movie masterpiece after exploding reviews had stamped it, with a red-hot poker, "genius" and "masterful" - but wasn't as excited to see it as those critics were, and decided to wait, after my friend's dire persistence, until the following Saturday to finally watch it.

And, like every critic and movie fanboy, found "The Dark Knight" a fantastic entertainment. Not really a bat-masterpiece (as some have coined), but instead a well done, thoroughly cooked, genre crime film, and succeeding better as a full-out immersive experience. The cleverly layered, vigorous intercutting caper, captured in downtown Chicago/Gotham City in all it's architectural glory, with more wow-induced stunts, exploding car-chases, an involved (though not impressive) ensemble cast, and vamped-up script, then any smaller budgeted crime drama would get; and all-out villainy run by Heath Ledger's crazy/master madman Joker, a role that popularly proved his talent as a diverse actor, and prematurely after his sudden death only months before the movie's release. And director, co-screenwriter Christopher Nolan, who helmed the first franchise reboot "Batman Begins" (of which I didn't like as much), and turned the Batman legacy itself into the majestic noir fable of youthfully wronged millionaire/vigilante Bruce Wayne, and his caped alter-ego Batman, ridding Gotham City of evil tyranny, something far from the comic-books, or even Tim Burton's fun Goth spin, or even beyond the dreams of what executive producer Michael Uslan had dreamed, who had made it his sole goal to produce a "serious" Batman film.

And still, even after "The Dark Knight," going into Christopher Nolan's new massive-scale noir/science fiction blockbuster, "Inception," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and another array of popular actors, in the all-too-real world of ambit and limitless dreams, I didn't expect any type of greatness out of it. That Nolan could be the next Spielberg, or Lucas, or Kubrick, and that "The Dark Knight" was just a once-every-so-often success, possibly proving Nolan as the heir to Spielberg, and those others, as the king of popular, and mind-bending, movie entertainment.

And, still, I was wrong again. "Inception" is the type of mass-popular entertainment (or extravaganza), and quality film, with the level of complexity and depth, that so immerses us, like the world of dreams itself, that we can't possibly get out of it, or want to. A world of tangible dreams, of actual boundaries and mathematical sureness, that the dangers are all-too-real. If you get hurt in a dream, you feel the pain. If your body moves while you dream, your dream-self moves with it. Like Joseph Gorden-Levitt, fist-fighting in a classy hotel corridor as the space turns over and about like a fun-house circle, and Gordon-Levitt floats in the air like an astronaut, as if hovering on a shuttle in orbit, as his real body goes through free fall, all the while spinning out of control, and for us in agonizing/mesmerizing slow-motion, ticking down the time until all drastically ends. Ends into what? Into death. And when you die in a dream, you may not die in real life, but you go "in limbo," the dreaded unconscious hyper-sleep where dream and reality merge, and minutes seem like years, moments like life times, where whole cities are built from the ground up and crumble in front of your eyes, and where you may very well lose your sanity. These are the very real consequences of Leo DiCaprio and his skilled team of "extractors," dreamscape specialists who invade the minds of unsuspecting persons and steal their "secrets" and sell to the respected employer, and who here brave the mind of rising-up young business mogul Robert Fisher Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to instead "plant" an idea, called "inception," so he would believe it is his own, and by-and-large change the world, and cause the dismantle of his inherit conglomerate. "Inception" is a tricky business, to successfully and convincingly make believe the concept was the person's own, something that could easily be traced back to the dreamer, or "architect," of whom creates the actual physical world of the dream itself to bring the hapless subject in to make feel at home, or believe that his dream is his, is benign, while these extractors go about inhabiting and manipulating like a virus, a comparison DiCaprio's master extractor Cobb believes is similar to what ideas actually are. But it's also dangerous, with "projections" that come in with the dreamer's emotionally compromised subconscious as skilled assassins or deadly loved ones as guilty memories; and delving into layers, dreams within dreams, to further deepen the sleep of Fisher, and to subject him to the weaknesses of his own subconscious, in order to successfully plant the idea. But it could mean for Cobb and his team, as well as Fisher himself, to fall into limbo, and never wake again.

The movie "Inception" is like the various layers of the dream, well-constructed, diligently detailed, and wholly convincing. A movie that once it gets further into the dreams with Cobb, into the various levels and depthless pits of the psyche, drags us along with it, drenching us in it's complexity and network of catacombs and mazes. In "Inception's" ultimate payoff climax, where it excitingly careens us on the edge of our seats, Cobb's crew goes deeper than they ever imagined, having to get out not just three layers, but four; a van-free fall, a death-spinning hallway, a snow-glad mountain fortress shootout, and Cobb's own memories, his dead wife Mal's fatal lair of hate and despair. Like "The Dark Knight," Nolan, with his swift editor Lee Smith and Hans Zimmer's booming music cues, madly intercut between it all, and by this point the movie becomes so engrossing that by the end of it you might feel walking out of the theater you were in an unescapable dream, living in a virtual hell, and that the only way to get out is death, or worse.

"Inception's" main architect is Chris Nolan, the writer/director, who knows the world he is creating, loves it to death (he spent years writing the screenplay), and stylishly takes us through it like this were a cool "Ocean's Eleven" heist, and Dicaprio and team, Gordon-Levitt, Murphy, Ellen Page, Ken Wantanbe, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, and a group of other well known actors, are the George Clooney's, Brad Pitt's, and Matt Damon's. And with Lee Smith's rapid editing, Hans Zimmer's ferocious synthetic/orchestral score, Wally Pfister's steely photography, and Guy Hendrick Dyas ironclad production design, puts us into this brazen and bold world just as well. And for Nolan personally, "Inception" is a much bolder, bigger, and hugely imagined film than even "The Dark Knight," and far better than "Batman Begins" and his "The Prestige," another mind-cruncher about merciless rival magicians, and their highly sought after secrets, in early 1900's London. And you'll all have to tell me about "Memento," a supposed mind-boggler masterpiece (other than maybe "Inception," no doubt), by a novice Nolan, I haven't seen (I'll get around to it).

While it has a cleverly structured script and deft directing from Nolan, I still feel there were flaws in "Inception." The characters, even DiCaprio's Cobb with his visual representation of his guilt ridden conscious as Marion Cotillard's tragic Mal, are all pretty weak, and aren't as deep as the dreams they so immensely dive into. And the first half of the film, before the movie takes us into Fisher's mind with Cobb and team, and so entrapping us, was a bit slow-paced with insipid exposition (just not as cool or satisfying as "Ocean Eleven" expositional planning). Not a bad first half at all, but put "Inception" off to a less-than-fantastic start.

And the ending, even with how clever and perfectly whole an idea that brings all of the thing full circle, was too predictable, and I saw coming even before the movie started. It could have been how discreetly the film was marketed that I was looking for something to be a little off, or maybe I was more clever than the idea itself. Anyway, the ending is perfect, and beautifully symbolized. You couldn't go wrong.

Many critics will see this film again, and many moviegoers, too, and I certainly will. Not really to catch anything I've missed (actually, "Inception" isn't as mind-bending or twisty-turny as most have said it is, at least not in the film's plot), but just to experience it again, and see a film that is a true movie lover's delight. Chris Nolan I don't think is the next great pop director, but loves the movies just as much as we do. He knows what we want to see.

To submerge us in ecstatic movie dreams. Go see it. Go see it twice. "Inception" is a marvel of a movie.

RECENT MOVIES: Disney's new "based on" fantasy flick, "The Girl" returns, and "Winter" chills you to the bone

"THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE" ☆☆

All the "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" needs, Walt Disney's new kid-action fantasy, is the beloved "Fantasia"/Mickey Mouse cartoon (and famous classical piece), and a similar sequence in the updated movie itself, to merit an $150 million budget, with extensive CGI, high-powered car-chase stunts through downtown Manhattan, and Nic Cage stylishly getting us through it all as centuries old, cool master sorcerer Balthazar, who needs to find the Prime Merlinian, a foretold young wizard who will one day destroy evil before they vanquish the world by rising the undead (called the, uh, Rising) and killing everybody. And Disney, as well as director Jon Turtletaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (the dream-team that did "National Treasure") seem to think that's all they should offer. It isn't good enough, for adults or kids, to the classy entertainment that this show, and Nic Cage's Balthazar, thinks it is.

College-guy Dave Stutler, played by type-cast dweeb Jay Baruchel, is "the chosen one" who will, and must, stop the evil, and who, just like us, can't seem to get why he should. What does he owe to save mankind from zombies and the supposedly very dangerous, formidable sorcerers and sorceresses, including Salem's own Abigail Williams, who have been inside an ancient doll, called the Grimhold, for so many years? Because he is The Chosen One? Because he is a nerdy dork who needs to prove his worth, and get the girl, of whom he's wanted to woe since he was ten, when Balthazar himself halted the process by introducing himself into Dave's ordinary life with a silver dragon ring and a destiny that means confronting and once and for all stopping evil for the sake of good, where all else will fail? Why should he care? In the moment where Dave would walk away from Balthazar, and sorcery, and his supposed magical destiny, he decides to stay, because he thought that the magic was cool. Is that why we should care, too? Why we should stay in the movie theater? Because we thought the magic was cool?

Actually, I didn't think the visual effects were that impressive.

The Disney short, with Paul Dukas' famously whimsical orchestral piece, is a much better entertainment, and far better aesthetic piece, then the movie it's "based on," with Mickey as the Apprentice, in his notable blue-starry pointy hat and red cloak, controlling a mop magically to pail water, when the whole thing turns disastrously wrong as the mop multiplies to hundreds and swamps The Sorcerer's dungeon with raging water, and Mickey desperately trying to stop it, and the majestic Sorcerer coming to halt the mad procession in one swift, masterful hand, just in the nick of time. "Fantasia's The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is one of the world's best known pieces of perfectly synced images, animation, and classical music (from a guy who doesn't know much about classical music or animation), and could beguile me on dozens of viewings then 2010's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" could only halfway through.

Like most blockbuster entertainment this year, it's a poor movie, with uninspired acting/directing that's too hammy, with an uninspired script (with that great inspired piece?) that's just as fuddled in plot gimmicks and devices like most of kid entertainment out right now, and that some kids may find too silly to even like. A flying, steal eagle? Chinese dragon puppets coming to life? The Grimhold? The Rising? Abigail Williams? The only motive to bad-guys is to take over the world? And the only one to stop them is "the chosen one?" Who is always a young hero? Magic shouldn't exist and be known to anyone, but the climatic battle blasts out in the middle of Washington Square?

And "The Prime Merlinian!?" Give me a break.

"THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE" ☆☆☆

Not as good as it's predecessor, the smart, chilling Swedish whodunit crime thriller "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," about morally wronged Lisbeth Salander, the virulent young goth-girl with a scared childhood, and her fare colleague and on-and-off lover, Mikael Blomkvist, the assiduous "Millennium" magazine editor and amateur sleuth, solving murder while we get closer to Lisbeth's past, on her reason's for despising men (though loving Blomkvist), and confronting new villains for sake of others and her horrible past. That first film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev with screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and the acclaimed novel by Stieg Larsson, is a a well-crafted thriller, with terrific suspense and compelling characters, Mikael Blomkvist, the various suspects, involving Nazis and old family feuds, and of course Lisbeth herself, who overtakes her chaperone, vicious rapist Nils Bjurman, and as we learn more about her she steadily and mercilessly begins to unwind. In "The Girl Who Played With Fire," Lisbeth is framed for murder of "Millennium's" new reporter and his girlfriend, as they were uncovering sex trafficking, and while that is something Lisbeth would be against someone has placed her prints at the scene of the crime. But why? And why does it involve Bjurman? And is it to do more with her troubled family history? She and Mikael try to solve it, while Lisbeth is hunted by a large albino with an abstinence for pain, the cops try to track her down, and Mikael begins to uncover the mystery of who is "Zala."

"Girl Who Played With Fire" isn't as catching a story as "Girl With Dragon Tattoo," and this one, now directed by Daniel Alfredson and written by Jonas Frykberg (though with the same book/writer in the novel series) isn't as chilling or involving, and it could be the director wasn't as steadfast or the book was just weaker than the first. Anyway, I didn't like this one as much. But it's still an engaging mystery/suspense movie, with a throughly engrossing climax (although it ends too soon). I think we can see the payoff in "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" do better, and aren't seconds in trilogies weaker anyway?

"WINTER'S BONE" ☆☆☆ 1/2

An indie film, with a true indie cast and crew, that relies on it's sheer force to persuade. Persuade us of 17-year-old Ree Dolly's (a great Jennifer Lawrence) plight to keep her younger brother and sister, Sonny and Ashlee, from depravity in rural Missouri, where the winters are stark chill and devoid of any life, warmth, solitude, and sense of security. Where drugs causes her dad to go missing, and his involved family business to become an unflinching barricade to the truth, of horrible red-neck monsters, higher on the chain of command like an organized mob of true killers. Ree can't stop finding her father, even if it means her own safety. The two younger Dolly's will go hungry, and missing dad, Jessup Dolly, put up their home as collateral for his bond, and a ditched court date will submit Ree, her siblings, and disabled mom, to the streets if he doesn't show, which is why Ree has to find him, and why she has no choice. The army won't take her, the possible economy down-spiral can't get her a job, and the seemingly endless miles of vacant, skeletal woods, rundown lower-class houses, and the bitter dead of winter that seeps hope out of us just as it might Ree, is why she no choice, and why she can't give up. Braving the haunting rural landscape and the vicious cretins that will go to any lengths to keep their drug trafficking out of the law, Ree needs to find her father, of whom she hates, her drug-induced, cooking, good-for-nothing lowlife of a dad, to keep Sonny and Ashlee feed, and warm for winter. With only the help of friendly, giving neighbor Sonya, girlfriend Gail, and well-meaning uncle Teardrop, where Ree's and his relationship is something odd and special to behold, can only keep Ree up for so long before she makes her own choices.

However, "Winter's Bone" ends the way you would expect, everything resolved, and things back to the way they were, which doesn't defeat the movie, but keeps it from a truly perfect moral conclusion. Ree never makes a choice. Well, if only to stay with her sibs and not go into the army, something she has always wanted (with 40,000 big ones to help her family along), but we'd expect that. (SPOILER ALERT!: Maybe losing the home, giving Ashlee and Soony away, and going out on her own, in those endless, dark, dank, unforgiving woods, to an uncertain future, would have suited it's story better) Anyway, the film relies on it's impact, on Ree, and those woods, to frighten us, and chill us, to the bone. It works like hell.

RECENT MOVIES: Evil needs to be more evil, Night descends, but Knight makes us laugh, Karate Kid makes us cheer, and Ridley Scott reglorifies a legend

"DESPICABLE ME" ☆☆ 1/2

A better title than idea, about underground-suburbanite, James-Bondian villain Gru (who in the advertising trailers looks like the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock) trying to steal the moon, and beat his nemesis, younger, pretentious nerd, Vector, for the # 1 spot as super-baddie of the world. And in order to do so adopts three darling orphans, hopeful, but disdainful Margo, troublesome Edith, and all around cuttie pie Agnes, from the local shelter, and he hopes to use the kids and just as easily dispose of them for his master plan. And the kids hope to warm Gru's heart, and ours, to find the adoptive father in Gru they, nor he, never knew he had. Can we hope, too?

The gags are all funny and relatively light (no potty humor, thank you), the story follows a good arc, the characters are rounded okay (I had my problems with Mr. Nerfario, who jumped from compliant gadget maker of Gru to being his aggressive outer conscious), but the sentiment, however trying to get there, doesn't pull our heart strings enough. "Despicable Me" could have used deeper moments with Gru and the kids, having finer ground to feel for them. And with that, to make the movie better from there, a bit more whimsy, more funny, and more character stuff. Maybe make Vector less pompous and idiotic and more venomous, and evil banker Mr. Perkins more menacing making him the real villain of the movie, and orphanage warden Miss Hattie more like the abominable chaperones of "Harry Potter's" the Dursleys; and why isn't Gru more of a spiteful scoundrel than just a troublesome school bully on the playground, possibly making him a more attractive, or unattractive, character? The little yellow minions were funny enough, but could have been just as hysterical as Universal had marketed them to be. The girls, Margo, Agnes and Edith, are easily the most interesting because they are the center of the human factor in this (and they are really cute!). But despite them, we still needed more bittersweet.

I didn't like the idea, but it works enough, I just would have wanted to see the "Despicable" that was in the title, with the more balancing wit and emotion. The pop songs were good, though. Groove on, Pharrell Williams!

"THE LAST AIRBENDER" ☆

M. Night Shyamalan is a writer, director, and producer with the privilege to even write, direct and produce at all. A once talented and intriguing moviemaker, Shyamalan is now a confectuous self-promotor whose works turn inside out once torn apart by outside common sense, aka the critics who once admired him and the audience who flocked to every original pic he dished out. Since then, he has fallen victim to his own "genius," making movies that are flat, poor and fail on every level. M. Night's latest, the CGI fantasy "The Last Airbender," a property that he didn't originally create, is another on his failing resume, and possibly is his worst. There is no going into it much, everything about the movie stinks.

Except for the crew: DP Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings); effects house ILM, with Pablo Helman as the VFX supervisor (Stars Wars, among various films for Steven Spielberg); production designer Philip Messina and costumer Judianna Makovsky. They all do top-notch work here, and composer James Newton Howard's score made the movie a little better at times.

Still, even with all that talent, "The Last Airbender" is atrociously bad. Sorry kids, go back to watching reruns of the animated show...That includes you, too, Night.

"KNIGHT AND DAY" ☆☆☆

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz serve up classic hollywood actor chemistry, entertaining the audience and allowing us to laugh at the very reckless/brainless plot that doesn't make much sense. That's why it works. Still, the movie could have used more logic.

"THE KARATE KID" (2010) ☆☆☆

I haven't seen John G. Avildsen's 80's "The Karate Kid," another rise-up underdog story that got audiences as easily as Avildsen's own "Rocky" did, and this new "Karate Kid" - directed by Harald Zwart with terrific newcomer Jaden Smith (just like his dad, Will Smith, and he was also the film's Executive Producer) as Kung-Fu Kid Dre Parker and Jackie Chan (possibly the role he was born to play, he just needed to wait a few years) as Zen Master Mr. Han - is another grandstander as well. It's the type of movie, with a house-raising finale, we've seen before, a hundred, a thousand times, where the underdog overcomes his fears, wins in glory, earns the respect of his opponents, friends and family, and gets the girl. We've seen it so much we know the formula better than Hollywood does, and if it doesn't please us the way a good crowd-pleaser should, than we can't really say it was pleasing at all. "The Karate Kid" follows that tradition, and in turn earns our respect, that we know what we want in an underdog sports drama, to jump and cheer and rout for Dre Parker and be charmed by him and be touched by him, and feel and be mystified by Mr. Han. This "Karate Kid" hugely succeeds on that level. The movie could have been shorter, though.

"ROBIN HOOD" (2010) ☆☆☆ 1/2

This is the glorified version of Robin Hood, done in that terrifically chilled, gritty and romantically mesmerizing style that director Ridley Scott can only do and all others, mostly patchy imitators, fail at. Of lush landscape, cold and mystifying woods, formidable fortresses, and bang-up action. Scott has made some of his best work when doing high genre works like this: "Alien"/"Blade Runner" for science fiction, "American Gangster" for the old-fashioned 70's crime drama, and "Kingdom of Heaven"/"Gladiator" for the medieval epic, and the styles of those, as well as Scott's signature retro pace, is some of the best you'll see around.

A great A-list cast, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt, Max von Sydow, among others, with Scott's impeccable crew, and Brain Helgelad penning the script (the guy who wrote "Mystic River"), create the best Robin Hood yet.

I could care less that it tries to be historically accurate (What?), "Robin Hood" is a rousing, roaring medieval action film that works up to being a true heros' legend.

However, I would have preferred more of Robin stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Maybe that comes with the half-baked history.