THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Season Of The Witch
Amer
Tron: Legacy
Machete
Let Me In
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Salt
The Expendables
The Last Airbender
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger. Action/Sci-Fi, USA, 140 min.

The second great Summer movie – the first being TOY STORY 3 – is director Christopher Nolan’s bold and imaginative voyage into the intimate and infinite world of dreams. It’s the one most people have been waiting for and in terms of originality and ambition within the sci-fi blockbuster format INCEPTION truly does deliver a memorable and ingenious thrill-ride.

Dazzling as it is puzzling, spectacular as it is audacious, Nolan’s psychologically extended, and far bigger budgeted, DREAMSCAPE could well be THE DARK KNIGHT creator’s 2001. It’s an inevitable comparison considering the almost Kubrick designed finale involving a dying man, in a designer room, unlocking one man’s inner universe. There will be no major plot description here; this is one movie best left for the individual to discover, process and interpret. Suffice it to say Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Dileep Rao and Tom Hardy are a crack team hired by vested business interests to invade billionaire Cillian Murphy's dreams in order to plant an idea there that will have far-reaching consequences for the financial markets. But in order to carry off this daring act of inception, they must cross through four ever-deepening levels of the dream state where they find unimaginable perils lurking in every hidden area of the subconscious. It’s not giving anything away to say that one of those clear and present dangers is the bittersweet memory of DiCaprio’s deceased wife, Marion Cotillard, whom he cannot let go of and keeps locked in a delusional reverie to visit when at a low emotional ebb. Once past the first head-scratching half hour, Nolan’s heady dense merging of James Bond, THE MATRIX and MEMENTO keynotes becomes a smartly constructed edifice that completely immerses you in another world, where the screen becomes just another hypnotic layer of the cross-cutting narrative before you to work out. Yet again Nolan charts a compelling original course through a brilliant concept that takes in everything you ever thought about dreaming. Like how come they never seem to have a beginning, the time extension factors, the consequences of dying in a dream, and the ‘kick’ that wakes you up. Here one of the latter is playing Edith Piaf’s 'No Regrets’, a coded reference to LA VIE EN ROSE Oscar winner Cotillard. The mind-bending visual effects, including Paris folding over on itself, the fights in zero gravity marking the welcome return of the revolving set a la 2001 and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, are stupendously good, and the performances are all top-flight. Expect DiCaprio, in his second reality shifter after SHUTTER ISLAND, to be Academy Award nominated for his multi-shaded performance as The Extractor with the X Factor in Nolan’s grippingly cerebral vision layered with deft charm, wit, soul and panache.

With a superb script that ultimately fits together like the fine Swiss watch on show, INCEPTION rewards those who pay attention with a relatable emotionalism and true heart placed at the centre of all its cleverness. Not to be missed on any account.

Alan Jones

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