I hate my life.

Honestly.

Just sayin'.

Inception -- 'Holy cock'

I was the first one in the cinema to say 'awwww' when the end credits of Inception began to roll -- not because I was sad that it ended, no, but because the ending made so much brilliant sense. I saw it coming, just a few seconds before the screen blacked out, and I was all like 'awwww now that was some clever shit right thar.'

Inception is a heist movie about dreams. Dom Cobb (none other than Leo Dicaprio) is an Extractor -- originally working in security of the mind, he specialises in stealing ideas from people's minds through their subconscious. Cobb is a fugitive from the United States; he is forced to work overseas, away from his children. However, Cobb finds himself employed by a billionaire businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), who offers him a job in exchange for a clean record, which can apparently be made with one phone call. But the job has a twist: Instead of extracting an idea from a subject's mind, he must instead implant one, through a very difficult, complex process called inception. Cobb assembles a team Ocean's-Eleven-style, including Arthur, his long time associate and Point Man (the subject researcher, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt); Ariadne, a college graduate and Architect (the dream-builder, the lovely Ellen Page); Eames, a snide British stalwart and Forger (essentially an in-dream shapeshifter, played by Tom Hardy), and Yusuf, an atypical Indian scientist and Chemist (he devises the formula necessary to descend into the dream state; played by Dileep Rao). However, the job is blown some setbacks due to an interesting mystery involving Cobb and his dead wife, who makes some eerie appearances to drive the plot.

Inception is some crazy ass shit. Because he's exploring a concept which I have a hunch most of us have never really thought about too deeply before, Christopher Nolan has to set down some ground rules. Remember this is the guy that made The Dark Knight, so note that he knows what he's doing. I'll sum up the rudimentary dream rules for you in a nutshell:

You die in a dream, you wake up for real. However, you can still feel regular pain which doesn't kill you. You can have dreams within dreams. In this case, if you die in a dream, you will ascend to the earlier, shallower level of dream. E.g. if I go to sleep and I dream I'm in a pyramid, and then I go to sleep in my pyramid dream and wake up in the Himalayas, if I die in the Himalayas dream I will go back to the pyramid. Dying in the pyramid will wake me up. Thirdly, you can also ascend dreams/wake up by delivering a "kick." The kick is essentially that falling feeling you get (it's called a hypnic jerk -- this is the bit I'm a bit sketchy about, as this does not actually happen in dreams, but only during hypnogogic state: the period between wake and NREM sleep. NREM is where you DON'T dream). Lastly, time bears a different appearance in each level. In the first level of dream, five minutes of real time represents an hour in the dream. In turn, a few seconds in dream time can mean a couple of hours in the second dream. And so on.

So basically, Nolan's concept of the dream is astounding. He nails the non-linearity of the dream world, and the way he's put together this film is amazing. It took him ten years to write this script. Guy's done some serious work. There are fantastic action sequences, the cast is stellar (despite DiCaprio incorporating a little too much of his character from Shutter Island within the role of Cobb), and the story pulses with an unpretentious dazzle which few would expect from a movie with such hype. Nolan manages to make us care about the characters, and that is the key to a good action sequence -- to have the audience caring what happens. Cobb's relationship with the projection of his deceased wife within his subconscious is also captivating; the tense love between the two is especially enthralling when one considers the indistinct hate that stems from their affection. 

But it's difficult to surpass the excellency with which Inception conveys its events. It's not so much the story itself, which is actually not that complicated once you put your brain through a few paces, but just the way it's told. Nolan's vision of a dream makes wonderful sense (however, please do not believe it to be true. Nolan may yet achieve his secret goal of incepting all of us by convincing us that we live in a dream and must kill ourselves to awaken). I love how the different time durations are always acknowledged and synchronised so that events make chronological sense. Also, the special effects are amazing. Here's a kicker: The state of the level above a dream tier affects how that tier behaves. For example, if one is thrown into a bath in reality, his dream will overflow with water and he will wake. If someone is given a "kick" during one dream state, they will awaken into that state from the one below. If that makes sense. Blah. Watch the movie and it makes perfect sense. 

Anyway, back to the point. Part of the movie involves all the crew in free fall in a van in dream state A. However, only one of them is presently awake in state A. The rest are in states below. Only Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awake in state B; the others are all in states below. In free fall, one is essentially in a vacuum. So Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in a vacuum. But before that, the van in state A is rolling around and shit. So Gordon-Levitt is having these fights in a room where gravity is constantly changing. They did not use CGI to do that. They used a fucking rolling room. 

Anyway, the twist comes right at the end. The thing is, you don't even know if it's a twist. Nolan has his last laugh, leaving the film as open to interpretation as poetry. It's a daring finale for a daring movie. You know what's the strangest part though? With all its complexities and multifaceted vibrance, Inception at its core ultimately delivers a very simple moral, one which I can quote right out of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.' 

Inception is a film that will have you rolling your head around. Why? Because the film's events are so open to one's interpretation. The most fantastic thing is, that either way one chooses to analyse them, the elements make sense. It's like a multipurpose jigsaw puzzle. It's brilliant. If Inception has you mindboggled, don't worry, you aren't stupid -- it's driven us all mad. In a good way, of course. The truth kind of is... if you don't walk out of that cinema slightly perplexed, then you probably didn't watch the movie right. 

Here's a tip: When you walk into this movie, pay attention. You will need it. Nolan explores a realm that we are seldom aware enough to explore ourselves, and delivers his own interpretation of it for which you yourself must understand the ground rules in order to take part in this fantastic narrative. The film is trippy, intelligent, and in context of the plot, glowingly astute. Prepare to be mindblown. 

5/5. Do not miss it.

Sydney ft. Get Him To The Greek/Predators

So I just got back from Sydney today. Caught up with some of my friends from there. Was good. If you didn't know, I lived in Sydney in 2008. That was pretty shit but I met some good friends there. And yeah. It rains an awful lot in Sydney. Seems to be the case when a member of my family is there at least. I dunnolol. I discovered how to play Texas Hold 'Em as well as how to play Guitar Hero on Hard, which I'm actually kind of proud of. 

Yeah so when I was there I saw a couple movies:

Get Him To The Greek is kind of a spiritual successor to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It stars Russell Brand (as Aldous Snow, a has-been rock legend) and Jonah Hill, who incidentally had a small role in FSM as an obsessive Aldous Snow fan. Aldous Snow was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well. 

So this movie is weird. I dunno man. It's like... bleh. Jonah Hill (Aaron) is a music talent producer guy whatsit, who has to seek out talent to revive our failing music industry (which coincidentally sucks shit-dick-cock-balls in real life as well). So he has an idea to revive Aldous Snow, a rock musician who several years ago fell out of fame due to his disgraceful music single, African Child (which the movie humorously cites is the third-worst thing to happen to Africa just below poverty and famine). So Jonah Hill is sent off to London to retrieve an erratic, wild rock musician, with a very small time limit to get him to the States. 

So the movie. Alright. Compared to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, this movie does jack shit. As a comedy, it's meh. I'll say this: Jonah Hill and Russell Brand work really well together -- but the movie just doesn't work. There is some absolute gold in terms of humour, but for the most part, it's not quite there. The film relies too much on the depiction of drug use, crude behaviour, brief flashes of sex scenes and unnecessary titties to keep the viewer engaged. It isn't consistently funny. This isn't helped by the fact that it just doesn't know what it wants to be. Get Him To The Greek haphazardly slips between ambitions of being a straight-up rude comedy and ambitions of trying to be deep and meaningful. Because of this the humour is all over the place. At one point I just wasn't sure whether to laugh because I was thinking, 'Should I be laughing at Aaron's heart attack due to ingesting an infusion of drugs or should I be focusing on the tension between Aldous and his dad?' I mean Jesus movie, fucking decide what you want to be!

Overall, GHTTG is meh. 2.5/5. 

_________________________________________________________

Next up, Predators. Predators is supposed to be to Predator -- according to Robert Rodriguez -- what Aliens was to Alien. He says let us forget Predator 2, AvP and AvP: R (the latter two of which are absolute cock-shit-dick-balls) ever happened. Okay, Predators doesn't even draw slightly near Aliens, but then again, how many movies have?

Predators was... interesting. If you don't know already, the film centers on a group of human 'predators' (ha, see what they did there) who find themselves plummeting down to a jungle planet equipped with parachute packs, clothes and weapons, and find themselves the prey in a game reserve set up by an alien race. Onwards! Okay, it starts off really slow. In fact the sluggish nature of the start really pissed me off, and in my opinion marred the rest of the film. It spends way too much time introducing these archetypal characters -- which is actually really pointless because the majority of them die at extremely short intervals afterward anyway. The start also tries too hard to build tension and suspense -- suspense which isn't there. It tries to keep you scared of what the Predator actually looks like by not showing any for rather a long time, which is fucking pointless because most of the people watching the god damn movie have already seen Predator.

Something that also pissed me off was the fact that the big names (apart from Adrien Brody and Topher Grace) who were most used to market the movie were used only for that purpose -- meaning their screen times are very short. Pissed me off. However, Laurence Fishburne's character was great, I loved him. I think he was about the most invested actor in this movie, even though his role is just a wacky cameo. Topher Grace was also brilliant (he played Eric in That 70s Show and Venom in Spiderman 3). His character was great and I think throughout the whole movie, the simple kindness of his character -- who is a complete misfit from the others -- builds far more suspense than any of the shitty emptiness of the early scenes. Lastly, I'm sorry, but Adrien Brody wasn't very good. He just doesn't work as an action hero -- let alone compete with Arnie. He pulls this voice which makes it seem like he's modeled his character around Christian Bale's Dark Knight performance and it's really annoying. He does a very nice final fight at the end, but apart from that he didn't pull the macho-man role off.    

I have to say though, that the action sequences were brilliant in every way. I just wish there were more. There wasn't enough fighting for me, considering it was a sequel to Predator. Don't get me wrong, the deaths were spectacular, but the movie plays it safe in terms of scale and formulaic in terms of story; there aren't enough tricks played. There are twists, but it certainly won't twirl your head around. I hoped for a larger-scale onslaught than what I saw, and the movie didn't quite deliver in that regard. 

Something I did love was the usage of the original film's main theme. Brought about some nice nostalgia. Too bad the film tries to be too nostalgic. You know that scene in Predator 1 where the guy starts stripping to his shirt and pulls out his knives to fight the Predator and buy the others more time? There's a part in Predators which is a massive throwback to that. You know how Arnie used mud to bypass the Predator's infrared vision? Yeah, Brody's character does that too (albeit not coincidentally in the film's favour). And if you remember who had survived the battle by the end of Predator, you will know who survives by the end of Predators within the first five minutes. Oh yeah, also, you know that shot in the trailer where Adrien Brody is standing and being targeted by dozens of laser sights? Yeah that shot was entirely cut out, so don't look for it. Cheap, I know.

In the end, I don't think Predators was as good as it could've been. I mean it's a huge improvement from AvP and AvP:R (I haven't properly seen Predator 2 to judge), but it should've gone for a more all-out-guns-blazing approach. It's too shy and self conscious. A reveal of more Predator gadgets and technology (or even lore) would've been cool, but we don't see that either. What the film delivers is a pretty good revisit of what Predator gave us (lots of gruesome battles, death and ferocious man-verse-alien warfare), but it doesn't bring anything new to the table, and that was quite disappointing. Anyhow, I do look forward to the sequel, with which I hope they'll be much more dynamic.

3.5/5; if you liked Predator, this is the only movie that will give you more quality Predator action (except for perhaps Pred 2, which as previously stated I have not seen).

-Dilan