He's in the mood for dreaming

I remember a time when films were under two hours long. It seems that to make a successful film, you have to make it approximately two hours and twenty minutes, or even longer if you have to. Surely Avatar could have been done in ninety minutes? Go on, describe to yourself what happened in that film, and give me one good reason why it warranted what is a downright offensive run time. The next Harry Potter film is going to be in two parts, probably both two hours and twenty minutes long, Why? It’s all getting a litt

le formulaic, and we end up watching all these blockbusters because we are told to, and afraid to rebel against the system, we pretend to like them, and then watch the sequels, and it goes on and on and on.

None of these films are that good either, they just fill niches. People like pirates, wizards, vampires, robots, menopausal slags, and the film industry offers all of these in a handy two hour plus package. The blockbuster has become a cold vacuous hole in which we throw our money into, and in return are punched in the balls.

Thankfully Inception sort of breaks this trend. Yes, it’s a “blockbuster”, and yes it’s 148 minutes long, and yes, it’s got pretty people in it, but it’s actually rather good. To describe what Inception is about is to ruin the whole film, so it’s very hard to write anything about it.

I loved Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight, so my expectations for Inception were high since the first time I heard of it, simply because Christopher Nolan was directing, and it was described as a sci-fi film. Then they mention that Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be in it, and then I had to change my pants.

Fortunately for me, Inception lived up to my expectations. The whole concept of the film actually made sense (as opposed to the messy Matrix trilogy), and never felt gratuitously complex (as opposed to the messy Matrix trilogy), though it did take a very long time just to explain the concept, which I imagine on a second viewing, would be quite tedious.

As expected with the cast on show, the acting was nothing less than brilliant, and it’s not often we get to see an ensemble this talented that actually works well together. There is so much crammed into the script that there is only really time for DiCaprio to give a truly amazing performance (not a bad thing at all), but when given their chance, the rest of the cast do exceptionally well, even that Juno girl. We can only hope that Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy will become more than supporting actors in the future.

A film is always made better by a good score, and we usually take this for granted, but this time it has to be noted that Hans Zimmer’s score is fucking insane. Making a ham sandwich would feel epic alongside this score, and it really makes the film seem bigger than it probably actually is.

The fact is that this film has to be big in every single way, because as the mind is infinite, the film has to be too. While this obviously cannot be achieved, it certainly has a good crack at it, and while appearing to be a generic blockbuster hit, there is a damn good sci-fi film underneath that should be put on the compulsory viewing list for anyone claiming to like science fiction.