"Inception" Review

The past decade has been a drought for truly creative and speculative science-fiction. Hollywood has become over-blown with explosions and one action scene after another to move a plot with an interesting idea, and let go of what that story had that was so fascinating to begin with. Hollywood has forgotten that the most beloved and time-testing sci-fi stories don’t deal with action, but deal with fascinating and heartfelt ideas. Director Christopher Nolan has not forgotten this notion. Nolan works with his amazing cast to tell a story that not only amazes and thrills you, but renews faith in the fact that there are still amazing untapped ideas to be had in the magic that is cinema.
Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his team work in extracting ideas and thoughts from the mind during the dream-state. Cobb and his team find themselving faced with performing the impossible. The task is to not steal an idea, but to plant one while facing the many dangers in not just the mind of the mark, but the dangers from Cobb’s own mind.
The cast for this film is top notch. Dicapro is fantastic as our hero Cobb. The supporting cast has a great chemistry and nobody is trying to steal the show. Everyone has potential to be your favorite character. Fantastic cast and performances all-around.
The screenplay to this film is ingenious. While the film’s structure is simple enough, Nolan delivers a film that leaves an audience with an infinite number of possibilities, but everyone will have their own interpretation. When a film can leave an audience with numerous thoughts on the ending, the film has truly achieved something new and inventive in its narrative. Without giving away spoilers, the film’s idea is intriguing in dealing with the notion of dreams and how they can grow to make or break a human mind. The screenplay while not emotionally driven, is driven by just the originality on how the film is presented. This science fiction film is structured as a heist film. A heist film that takes place in a world of the dream where all the characters are stationary and asleep.
In terms of where this film breaks new ground, apart from the screenplay, this film breaks new ground in the editing and the shooting of the picture. The picture was mostly shot with the notion of not using CGI as a quick answer to a technical problem. Everything in the movie feels real and feels as if everything is presented in a new and fresh way in terms of the world of the dream. The shooting of the picture puts all the amazing visuals, the elevator or the zero-gravity sequences, on-screen practicially to where you feel you haven’t seen a film like this before.
In the editing realm of the picture, Nolan breaks new ground in cross-cutting action spreading across three different worlds. Seeing how an action in one dream world interacts with the other worlds is cut in a way that is thrilling, intense, and has you gripping to your chair. By the end of the picture, you feel as if you had just been put through an intellectual ringer. While the film maybe emotionally-lacking at points for most of the characters, Nolan gives you a fantastic action film that is jam-packed with ideas, like most long lived speculative science-fiction.
In essence, Nolan gives us a dream world that must be seen to be experienced. You have not seen a film like this before. Everything in the film is presented in a fresh new and thrilling way. Nolan has delivered perhaps his most personal and well-crafted film with “Inception.” Everyone will have a different interpetation of the ending as it floors you and leaves you with a question. Nolan’s film feels like it is more interested in the journey and the idea, rather than the ending, and that’s what has sorely been lacking in storytelling lately. This is a speculative science-fiction that is akin to the minds of Kurt Vonnegut or Phillip K. Dick. This is the best and most original science fiction epic since 1999s groundbreaking "The Matrix." Nolan has delivered a masterwork that reminds the audience, as Emes (Tom Hardy) says in the picture, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

"127 Hours" Review

“I can do everything on my own.” says Aaron Ralston, played brilliantly by James Franco. The underlying reality behind this moving story is that despite this man being a perfect human specimen, he is undone by his selfishness and pays the ultimate price for his forced solitude in getting into the situation that pins him. Ralston’s The combined directorial efforts of Danny Boyle and the above-par acting talent of James Franco, both guaranteed to draw attention come Oscar time, work together to craft an emotionally driven film that inspires and leaves you with a renewed love for life and the belief that nothing is stronger than the human will to overcome any and all obstacles.
The film’s story the real-life events following a selfish and isolated man, Aaron Ralston, who on a canyon-land hike whose arm gets trapped in a canyon by a huge bolder and the film tells his struggle to stay alive for 127 Hours in a canyon with little to no resources. The film works mostly as a one-man show by Franco. Franco delivers the performance of his career as he turns a fairly unlikable character and adds layers of depth to his character. As the audience spends more time with Ralston, Franco gives the character enough empathy with each moment that passes, that by the end the films works up to an emotional crescendo that floors you. Franco’s performance is fantastic as he gives you a portrait of a person who is breaking down the longer he is trapped in that canyon, but in his breakdowns he realizes what he faults are as a human being. Watching these epiphanies unfold on-screen charges up the audience’s connection to Raltson to an extent that when that ending finally does come, the audience, along with Ralston, are feeling that intense and agonizing pain. Franco’s performance is emotionally connected and deep in all the right ways that it’s tough to not think about his portrayal as fantastic in looking back at the film.
The other star of this film is Boyle. Boyle’s job is an impossibly difficult one in that he is narratively confined telling a story about a man stuck in a small space of a canyon. Boyle has to pull every trick he knows as a director to make this film compelling and exhilarating. The editing style is amazing as Boyle figures out a way to convey the wants, needs, and the suffering a character. Never has one wanted to grab a drink more than when walking out of this film. An amazing shot comes in the film when Franco’s character has been stuck for a prolonged amount of time only to realize he has a bottle of unopened Gatorade lying and condensating with beads of water in his car. The shot that follows gets across that thirsty feeling that you just want that bottle more than Franco does, and you aren’t even stuck in the canyon. Boyle does a fantastic job with the direction and he plays to the strengths to the challenges the film throws at him.
Overall, Boyle and Franco put together a film that at best renews your faith in others and what life has to offer. The film presents the notion that a life of solitude is although efficient, it’s not a human way to live your life to the fullest. We all need someone in our lives. Be it all those relationships, friendships, and family, we are all connected and we deserve more than living the empty life that Ralston used to live before the ordeal. “This rock has been following me my whole life.” says Ralston as he comes to realize what his life as amounted to before...well you already know the ending.