THE IMDB TOP 50 CHALLENGE #17 Inception

If only all big budget blockbusters were made by Christopher Nolan. The vast majority of Hollywood’s action packed star vehicles are CGI-heavy, story-light dross where what passes as a plot serves only to link expensive set-piece after expensive set-piece – and, as a result, they are interminably dull.

Nolan, however, has realised that movie audiences deserve better. His film’s are well-acted, feature computer generated effects only where there is no alternative and, most importantly, have multi-layered, intelligent narratives which assume a certain intelligence on the part of the audience. It’s an approach which has seen the director’s status rise to almost untouchable status on the back of productions like Memento (reviewed here), The (underrated ) Prestige and his genre re-defining Batman trilogy. Inception is perhaps his finest achievement to date.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) is a thoroughly modern spy. Eschewing normal methods of intelligence gathering, he steals information directly from his subject’s brains. Entering via their dreams, he is an ‘extractor’ – paid big bucks to steal secrets from the subconscious mind. But his skill has come at a price: the loss of his family. So when he a billionaire businessman offers him a route home, he has to do something previously considered impossible: planting an idea in his subject’s mind. This process is known as ‘inception’.

Trying to explain the plot much further than that is to do the film a disservice. To spoil the surprises it contains would be a shame – and to articulate in words what happens on screen would be an insult to your intelligence. That’s not to say the story is overly complicated – it’s not. But it does require a degree of patience and a few handy moments of exposition from the cast – notably Ellen Page’s Ariadne.

Suffice to say, most of the movie’s action takes place within the world of dreams. Here, time passes more slowly and people can only be woken from their slumber by a ‘kick’ like the one that jolts you awake when you’re falling to sleep. It’s a neat incorporation of something audiences are familiar with as key plot points. For those familiar with myth, legend, psychology and art there are numerous other hints, in-jokes and clues embedded within this rich text – cutest of all being the use of Escher’s paradoxical architectural artwork.

It’s not all cerebral, though. There are some excellent action scenes, the best of which is a zero gravity fight in a hotel corridor. In order to film the scene Nolan had a giant replica corridor built and hung from a crane which spun it around its own axis. The action which takes place within this massive structure was choreographed rather than computer generated, creating some authentically meaty hand-to-hand combat. Crunching car chases and a snowy showdown are similarly spectacular.

Above all else, however, Inception is a film of ideas. Its huge scope covers life, death, grief, faith, the afterlife (or perhaps limbo?), love, loss and the nature of man. Whilst very apparent, those themes are worn lightly, meaning that the film can be enjoyed as pure spectacle. And that’s fine. But repeated viewings cause Inception to become more rewarding with every watch.

A magnificent and wholly original film.

The Dark Knight Rises

Ever since Tim Burton’s Batman, the world has waited for the truly definitive Dark Knight film. We’ve been treated to an assortment of Caped Crusaders, some truly memorable villains – and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze. Now, in the final instalment of his current incarnation, we have finally seen the real Batman.

Taking the best elements of the first two of his trilogy, Christopher Nolan has thrown in the best of Inception, ratcheted the whole lot up to eleven and created the greatest superhero movie of all time – a genre defining, game changing which realises every one of its director’s ambitious artistic visions.

Beginning eight years after the death of Harvey Dent and Batman’s self-sacrifice, the story resumes with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) a broken man – in body and spirit. Barely able to walk, holed up in his house like a latter day Howard Hughes, Wayne has retreated from public life as Gotham enjoys an unparalleled period of peace under the watchful of Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) Inevitably, however, a series of events conspire to tempt the Dark Knight to emerge from the shadows in a battle to save the city from complete destruction at the hands of his fiercest nemesis yet: the brutal Bane (a masked Tom Hardy).

To say much more would be to spoil the plot of one of history’s most eagerly anticipated films. Certainly my own enjoyment was tempered somewhat by a spoiler heavy review in The Guardian which led me to a media blackout prior to seeing the movie. I’ll not fall into that trap here.

What i can say is that Nolan has created a truly original superhero story with genuine gravitas and emotional heft. From the very outset the film tugs at the heartstrings as Wayne toys with the idea of donning the body armour again, only for loyal butler Alfred (a scene stealing show from Sir Michael Caine) to plead with him not to. It’s an emotional moment born of Nolan’s fastidious creation of a full and engaging back-story for his central protagonist – this is not a money spinning threequel but the conclusive part of what was always meant to be a trilogy.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent. Anne Hathaway is magnificent as the sleekly sexy Selina Kyle, a cat burglar par excellence, who always seems likely to figure significantly in the plot. Joseph Gordon Levitt adds steely determination as idealist cop Blake and Marion Cotillard lends a frisson of sexual tension to every scene she appears in.

Critics have been quick to slam Tom Hardy’s Bane, but that’s merely because he is not Heath Ledger. Nobody is and comparisons are unfair. Instead, he offers something the Joker did not: muscularity. He’s an immoveable force and Hardy bulked up hugely for the role. His sheer physicality poses Batman a problem he’s not yet dealt with – he cannot outfight or outmuscle his opponent. And this is a film in which Batman is severely physically punished – at times it’s painful to watch his body being battered and bloodied.

Perhaps the first time in Nolan’s trilogy, Batman and Bruce Wayne see their boundaries blurred. Often Batman is seen without his mask, the secret of his identity begin to slip and their fallibilities merge as one. Offering such a human touch to the superhero pays off in spades in the film’s climactic scene and is the key reason why Batman is a character worth rooting for: he is just a man.

Of course, The Dark Knight Rises is not just a drama – it’s a rip-snorting action adventure filled with Nolan’s trademark CGI-eschewing set-pieces, enormous battles and wry plot twists and surprises. Every single element of this film is superior to anything else the genre has ever produced. The world will wait with bated breath for the amazing Christopher Nolan to announce his next move.

Contagion

A film which promises to kill off Gwyneth Paltrow after ten minutes is one that deserves to be watched – particularly when the rest of the cast consists of big hitters like Matt Damon, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard and the criminally underrated John Hawkes. Director Steve Soderbergh has marshalled such a talented ensemble to great success before: will Contagion emulate the success of Ocean’s Eleven or flop like its disastrous sequels?

The movie opens with a sweating, coughing business woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from abroad to her husband and family in Minneapolis. She’s carrying a lethal virus picked up in China - and dropping in on her lover in Chicago en route she begins to spread the infection across the USA. The pandemic takes root, Paltrow dies and the Centre for Disease Control, World Health Organisation and Homeland Security are called in. The action jumps from location to location as the authorities attempt to prevent the outbreak’s spread and dampen the growing sense of international panic.

As you’d expect from Soderbergh, Contagion is extremely sick. Arguably its greatest strengths are kinetic sequences showing the transmission of the virus from one person to the next. Probably the greatest of these shows Paltrow’s character passing her infection around a busy casino: an environment the director has repeatedly proved himself comfortable in.

The human drama of the situation is dealt with less capably. Matt Damon tries manfully to inject some gravitas into his schlubby grieving father, but of the ensemble cast he’s the only one really worth caring about. This is the fault of an overly-ambitious storyline which simply attends to too many characters in too many locations. A tighter focus on a smaller number of stories would have allowed deeper explorations of the more interesting characters: an entire storyline concerning Marion Cotillard’s WHO inspector could easily be culled with no detrimental effect on the movie.

To be fair, Jude Law’s shifty medical blogger could quite easily have been cut out, too. He’s an irritant for both the authorities and the home audience – not least because of his dodgy and unnecessary Australian accent. If his role is to represent the world of technology and the way news (both true and false) spreads, then Soderbergh is over-egging the pudding. There are enough mentions of Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging as it is.

To be so critical of the film is perhaps a little unfair. It’s a thoroughly engaging watch and features some strong performances and some notable twists and turns. Sadly, it feels slightly episodic thanks to the separate story strands which are not tied together as neatly as they were in Soderbergh’s Crash. Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening than in the company of a cast like this in a thriller which resonates with an audience familiar with health scares like SARS and H1N1.