Quick Blurb Review: Inception

Well, I guess you can cross this off of my Top 10 Critically Acclaimed Films (That I Have Not Seen) list, honorable mention or no. Inception has been claimed by many to be the best film of 2010 and many fanboys were crying afoul when Inception did not win best pictures at the Oscars. Upon watching Inception, I am still unsure if the film was truly worthy of Best Picture. Not that it wasn't an intriguing ride, because it was, but since I haven't seen what did win Best Picture (Hurt Locker, I think it was), I can't say for sure.

Pessimistic note: the trailers made this part look cooler than it actually was. Sorry folks.

The story of Inception is pretty messed up. Technology now exists where people can invade people's dreams to steal ideas and Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best in the business. However, he carries a lot of emotional baggage and a man named Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him one last job: instead of stealing an idea from a competitor (Cillian Murphy), plant an idea and split the empire his father (Pete Postlethwaite *squee moment*) built, eliminating him as competition. DiCaprio assembles his team and then mindfucks occur.

I'm not exactly doing cartwheels around my friend's living room in an emotional frenzy going, "OMIGAWD, INCEPTION IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER AND I HAVE SUCH A HARD-ON FOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!!!!" Like I said, Inception is a good movie for many reasons but there's a lot to this movie. Christopher Nolan has an interesting method of film making and likes to toy with your head so that you stick around to see what the hell's going on. This is not a bad thing, mind you, but with the case of Inception, sometimes it's a little hard to follow...or at least it was for me because while I was watching it, I was also taking notes for things to talk about in this very review, so maybe I missed something.

The look of this film is great. Everything is shot so superbly that even if the plot was paper thin (which it isn't), at least it had cinematography on its side. It's really hard to explain them any further than that. You really have to see it for yourself. The performances here are solid, as per usual with what I've seen of Nolan's work (which admittedly is limited to Batman Begins & The Dark Knight) and if people are bitching about Leonardo DiCaprio, I wanna know what kind of fucking crack they're smoking.

Cobb sharing a moment with his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard).

There's two things that I want to touch base on before I wrap this up. First off is the stuff between Cobb & his wife. I do not want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this film yet (all five of you), but this is probably what stood out the most for me. The scenes between DiCaprio & Cotillard are painful, but not in the bad way. The dilemma that Cobb is having with Mal is genuinely heartbreaking and I'm not sure if it was the dialogue, the actors saying them or a combination of the two, but there were scenes where I almost shed a tear or two. Another thing that really stood out to me was how the film ended. My experience with Nolan's film endings were fairly simple, but this one really makes you scratch your head. At one point, they explain how you tell whether or not you're in a dream and the credits abruptly drop in on you before you can conclude if the happy ending is truly happy. It might make some people go, "Oh, man! We want a sequel! We need a conclusive end!" I'm in the crowd that is leaning more towards the idea of an Inception sequel tarnishing this ending. This is the same kind of ending that the story I wrote years ago, Predator: Experimentation, had where the film is letting the audience decide for themselves what the outcome was and a follow-up would just cheapen this simple but very effective ending. Christopher Nolan seems to have a good head on his shoulders and I think he'd tell the studios to stuff it if they tried to push a sequel to this film on him.

"Create a sequel to what? You best be joking, pal."

So, the long and short of it is that Inception was a pretty good movie that had many powerful elements in it. My only gripes would be that the hallway fight that people were going nuts over didn't look at mind blowing as I had hoped and that trying to remember what level of dream they were in was hard to keep track of. Then again, this is just one asshole's opinion and I would still recommend the movie for quality entertainment. Just don't be surprised if you feel afterwards that you'll need to see the movie again to fully understand it, or even fully appreciate it.

-The Cynic

P.S. Am I the only one who thinks that Ellen Page looks gorgeous dressed like this instead of her street attire?

Quick Blurb Review: The Simpsons Movie

Everyone knows who The Simpsons are. The combination of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa & Maggie are all a fairly hefty piece of the television popular culture pie, not to mention many of the other great side characters in the show. It's really 50/50 on whether people are surprised or not that the show has become the longest American primetime entertainment series (the 23rd season starts September 2011). However, considering that the series started out as skits on The Tracy Ullman Show and became a full fledged tv show on its own in 1987, it's surprising that with the popularity the show garnered, it still took 20 years to a full feature film to be released. Another thing that surprises people who know me is that since I was such a huge Simpsons back in the day, it took me an additional four years to actually watch the movie. So, how is it? Was it worth the wait?

Fair warning: Half the town doesn't have any lines in this film.

So the plot of The Simpsons Movie is that after Grandpa Simpson has a freakout in the middle of church, Marge attempts to find out the meaning behind it, believing that Grandpa has somehow foretold Doomsday (now with less angel fossils and mall openings). Homer impulsively adopts a pig and dumps its waste into the already polluted Lake Springfield, pushing it to the point where it mutants any animal that jumps in and the Environmental Protection Agency steps in (sadly, without William Atherton) and quarantines Springfield under a giant glass dome. Once it's discovered that Homer was behind it, he and his family go on the run to avoid being lynched.

For some reason, Green Day makes a cameo in it. Don't worry, they die in the first three minutes.

If you were to ask me when the show reached its peak, I'd have to say anywhere between Seasons 7 & 9 (as you can tell from my blogs from last September of Top 15 Favorite Simpsons Episodes), so I'll come right out and say it: this movie came out far too late. Had they released a Simpsons film during Seasons 7-9, then this movie would've been absolutely hysterical. That being said, this movie is still funnier than the show is now (the last episode I tried to watch had Homer making Bart pee himself on a jumbo tron at a baseball game. Pardon the pun, but all it did was piss me off) and while it may not have been great, it was still good. Better than I figured it would be, to be honest. There's a actually a pretty heavy scene involving Marge & Homer's wedding tape that I didn't think The Simpsons had in them anymore, not to mention plenty of funny moments in here, including cameos from old characters, nods to previous episodes (wrecked ambulance by the gorge for the win!), and stuff that the show may not necessarily be able to get away with, including a satirical take on the whole "romantic Disney animal" cliche and Marge's line of, "SOMEBODY THROW THE GODDAMN BOMB!"

I got a good roar out of this part too.

However, there were downsides to this film as well. The movie starts with the town in a theatre watching an Itchy & Scratchy feature film and Homer says that everyone's a sucker for watching something they can watch on their tv for free. Another thing that bugged me was Arnold Schwarzenegger is supposed to be the President of America? Fine, but they just wound up using the Reniere Wolfcastle template for Schwarzenegger, so why not just call him President Wolfcastle? The next thing that pisses me off is how the technology has changed to show the environments in The Simpsons now. The characters are hand drawn (near as I can tell) where as the backgrounds are becoming more and more digital. I can dig the hand drawn characters over the painted backdrops, but when you put something hand drawn over something really digital, it just makes the characters look like a bad special effect and its distracting. Finally, I think the film has a bit of a slow start and nothing really starts happening until half an hour into the picture. The first bit honestly just feels like an unaired episode of the tv series that they just shoehorned into here. Some of this probably could have been trimmed down a tad.

I still want to know who at 20th Century Fox said, "You know what the public wants to see? Bart's penis." I'm not kidding.

Despite any faults the film may have, it's still much better than what's on Sunday nights now. The Simpsons Movie is a good way to kill an hour twenty minutes and will provide you with some laughs (and a faint Wilhelm scream!), provided you can stomach the digital animations sticking out like a sore thumb. If you're a die-hard old school Simpsons fan, such as I was, I'd recommend approaching this film with caution. If it pays off or even breaks even for you, then great. If not, then pop in Seasons 7-9 in your DVD player and enjoy.

-The Cynic