Inception

Breathtaking? Yes. 

Mind Bending? Yes. 

A Masterpiece? Yes.

No joke, I feel as though I have just experienced a film that will go down as one of the shining lights in this era of filmmaking. The movie is brilliant on so many levels. Christopher Nolan has firmly placed himself in the pantheon with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola. I will leave the heavy critical praise to those who say it better than I can (see below), but I will say this... the scene depicted in the poster above has got to be one of the most exhilarating sequences ever committed to film. I was literally giddy in my seat. It worked so well both conceptually in the context of the film and visually that it was breathtaking. I couldn't sit still in my chair as it played out on screen in front of me.

For “Inception” is not only about the dream state, it often plays on screen in a dreamlike way, which means that it has the gift of being easier to follow than to explain… But even while literal understanding can remain tantilizingly out of reach, you always intuitively understand what is going on and why.

Helping in that understanding, and one of the film’s most satisfying aspects, are its roots in old-fashioned genre entertainment, albeit genre amped up to warp speed. Besides its science-fiction theme, “Inception” also has strong film noir ties, easily recognizable elements like the femme fatale, doomed love and the protagonist’s fateful decision to take on “one last job.”

- Kenneth Turan

“Inception” is the kind of film that will no doubt drive scores of viewers to theaters for a second go. But the key to success in a movie as purposefully complex as this one is that you see it again not because you have to, but because you want to. “Inception” is that rare film that can be enjoyed on superficial and progressively deeper levels, a feat that uncannily mimics the mind-bending journey its protagonist takes…

Nolan exemplifies the best kind of filmmaking, unchained from the laws of time, space and even gravity, but never from the most basic rules of narrative. Even at its most tangled and paradoxical, “Inception” keeps circling back to the motivation that has driven films from “The Wizard of Oz” to “E.T.”: Cobb, finally, just wants to go home.

This aim, in its simplicity, manages to make comprehensible even the most preposterous layers-upon-layers of “Inception,” and gives what could easily have been a chilly, impenetrable exercise a surprisingly strong emotional core. At its most audacious and enterprising, “Inception” provides just the kind of fully imagined escapism that adventurous filmgoers wish movies aspired to more often. But it’s the story’s most recognizable human struggles — to let go, forgive and move on — that make “Inception” worth puzzling over, long after its most transporting sensations have washed away.

- Ann Hornaday