A couple months ago I started this overt effort to learn from the cinema greats by systematically going through the Top 100 Movies of All Time. I just arbitrarily picked a half decent list, no rhyme or reason on the list selection… so don’t flip out there. I mean, what do I know? I talk about Indie films – and crazy mindjob films. I don’t know anything about the best films of all time. I wouldn’t even pretend to know. But I thought that the effort of going through a list like this one might teach me, ostensibly you, a thing or two about films. Well, today we have an interesting selection to cover – Inception. And I would argue, that I possibly have one of the most extensive write ups anywhere on the web about Inception. For example, my main Inception primer wherein I posit that there are 7 layers to the movie Inception, not 3, or 4. Or my long write up walking through the totems of Inception and how they all worked. I posted about troubling Inception questions and open issues that I had found with the film. A list of my favorite Inception quotes even?? I couldn’t stop thinking, or talking about Inception. So it’s a little weird that we are arriving here at the Top 100 Movies all time Inception – and that I plan to re-watch the movie in order to learn something new about the film.
Are there any of you out there that aren’t aware of what the movie Inception is about? Is that even possible? If not, boy are you lucky. Go watch this movie today! Great mindjob of a film with all the slickness of a Hollywood blockbuster. Wait, it is a Hollywood-blockbuster. Huh, that’s weird. Anyway, it tells the story of a group of dream-jumpers, who are hired to try and plant an idea in a baron’s mind. But somehow, it goes horribly upside down and backwards.
Top 100 Movies of All Time Inception Walkthrough
Nope. Not doing an Inception walkthrough here. If you want to read my enormously detailed Inception movie walkthrough, you can find it right here. But I loved how the movie opens with a job… the idea being that clever people can jump into a dream and jump back out again. But Cobb and his team jump into a dream, within a dream. CLEVER!! But the job they do require them to attempt to jump into a dream, within a dream, within a dream… in order to get deep enough to pull off the job. The screenplay finesse there is so good. Notice? Tell the audience what normal is (who’s to say normal isn’t jumping 27 dreams deep??) and then break the norm and do the extraordinary. And then, when things go wrong, fall beneath the third dream. Normal, more than normal, WAY more than normal!! Just great screen-writing right there. Christopher Nolan knows how to make magic happen. He is one of the only people in Hollywood cranking enormous budget films based on new IP time and time again. (Sure Batman, but otherwise… And I’d even argue, The Dark Knight was magic. Just glorious film making, and, oh, by the way, it happens to be set in Gotham.)
Thoughts on Inception
Since I am so well opined on this movie, I’ll keep this light. But I loved the cast here. Ken Watanabe was great as Saito. Michael Caine has to be in every Nolan movie ever, so, of course. And besides Revenant, this is my favorite DiCaprio movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy are glorious here. Cillian too? Marion Cotillard? Elliot Page as Ariadne? Just a gloriously deep cast. Everyone here is top of their craft and brings the heavy every time they are on screen. Oh, and the soundtrack! And the sound design! Did I mention the brilliance of the soundtrack, slowing as the team goes deeper into the the layers. So good.
The story, and screenplay, is so inside out brilliant… and yet accessible. (Unlike Tenet.) Everyone has had dreams. Everyone has had dreams within dreams. And so we all innately get this screenplay idea, even though it’s crazy. And that is what Nolan does so well, he uses disjointed editing and clever story telling in order to force the viewer to think through the concepts from beginning to end. Or sleep. One or the other.
My son, who is an enormous Nolan fan (“Why aren’t all movies like Christopher Nolan’s movies?” Brilliant question kid.) thinks that Inception is the best Nolan film (which, by default, means that this is the greatest movie of all time, at least in his mind.) I personally think that The Prestige is the best Nolan movie… but let’s not get sidetracked by facts. hahaha. But is it the 84th best movie of all time? I mean, I personally would put it much further up this list… but who am I? Next week is Die Hard, so, yeah, there is that!? hahah. See you all next week –
Want to see the other movies I’ve already covered in the top 100 list… check them out right here.
Edited by: CY