I really want to see Inception this weekend. I’m not as excited about it as Salt, but there’s a good chance I might see both films in the next week and a half, and I rarely go see new movies, so that’s saying something. At first I thought Inception was going to be one of those creepy, bizarre films that only geeks would pretend to “get”. But it seems like most critics and preview audiences are totally in love with this film. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 84%, and the cast alone is enough to sell me on it – in addition to the “leads” of Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio, the film has a supporting cast that includes: Michael Caine (awesome), Marion Cottilard (hot), Joseph Gordon Levitt (adorable), Tom Hardy (The Sex), Ken Watanabe (amazing), Cillian Murphy (creepy hot) and Pete Postlethwaite (awesome). So what are people saying?

Max Reed at Gawker:

It’s good. Really good, maybe. The script is pretty awkward, and manages to still be confusing despite 70 per cent of the lines being expository. (Like: I think there is a huge plot hole, but I might just think that because the script under-explains at least one important plot point.) The attempts at comic relief, with maybe two exceptions, fall horribly flat. The emotional center—the main romantic relationship in the movie—is completely blank. The plot is, despite what people seem to think, pretty simple. DiCaprio and a motley crew of dream thieves (they have these awesome, blunt spy-movie roles and accompanying titles, like “The Architect” and “The Chemist”) are given a seemingly impossible task (you know it is impossible because like six friggin’ people say “that’s impossible”): Instead of stealing an idea from their mark, they’re going to plant one. This is called “inception” (OH I SEE) and it requires this whole complicated dream-within-a-dream setup to accomplish. Obviously, things go wrong in unexpected ways, as they tend to do, in movies.

The whole movie is, more or less, one ridiculous set piece after another, as the characters move from dream to dream, and Nolan handles each new scenario with such brutal confidence and efficiency it’s kind of frightening. The script is smart (or at least, the ideas in the script are smart, mostly) but there’s almost no time to think about them. Or breathe at all, really.

The script isn’t even that stilted. Inception is like half pulpy sci-fi stories and half Jean-Piere Melville heist movies, and its characters are efficient professional assholes, who only say things that have direct impact on the plot. Even Ellen Page manages to go the whole movie without Juno-ing it up once, which is relieving.)

[From Gawker]

Elizabeth Weitzman at the NYDN says: “When “Inception” ends and the lights come up, you’ll be sitting in your seat, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell just happened. No synopsis could possibly do justice to the complex universe Nolan fashions as we go deeper into each visually ornate, emotionally intricate dreamscape. Granted, not every element works perfectly; Cotillard’s storyline feels underdeveloped, and the action could have been tightened up. But the ambition on display is so huge, and the filmmaking so intelligent, you’ll emerge feeling as if you’ve just watched an entire season of the greatest sci-fi series never made.”

Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times: “Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It’s a breathtaking juggling act… We are always in the Now. We have made some notes while getting Here, but we are not quite sure where Here is. Yet matters of life, death and the heart are involved–oh, and those multi-national corporations, of course.”

After reading all of these reviews, I think Nolan might be winning a Best Screenplay Oscar this year, I really do. He should have won it for Memento, but that was the year A Beautiful Mind won (… the hell?).

Here’s one of the trailers for Inception:

Poster courtesy of Screen Rant.