Andy Gapin

Simply put, Inception was mind-blowingly not mind-blowing.

And that is an overwhelmingly good thing and is actually what’s genius about the movie. The idea itself, being able to go into another person’s dreams isn’t anything groundbreaking, new, or far out there for a movie. It’s been done before plenty of times, hell, there’s an entire series of films based on this very concept. Inception has been hyped for being mind-blowing on this front, but I don’t think it is. What makes Inception different though is that Christopher Nolan actually thinks it’s a good idea to take this all the way to the dream within a dream within a dream within a dream level. That’s kind of a ballsy move if you actually care about people being able to follow what’s going on.

That many levels of dreaming isn’t the genius part though. What is genius is how simple and easy to follow all of this was. I’ve seen many movies try to get half that complicated and fail miserably, becoming a convoluted, confusing mess. Inception is none of that. You can follow everything easily without feeling like things have been dumbed down for you. That’s what’s so amazing about this movie. What makes all of this possible is that there is a lack of the unnecessary. Each dream level is only as complicated as it needs to be and we don’t spend much time in most of them. They’re also very different setting-wise, making it easy for Nolan to move back and forth between the levels freely to gives us a glimpse of what each character is up to. Additionally, nothing is left very long without any explanation, the audience is never left more than a few seconds or a couple of minutes without understanding what’s going on. Background info is given as it’s needed instead of making us wait forever just to understand a scene that happened earlier in the movie. Yet, somehow enough secrets are kept to keep the audience engaged. The balance was damn near perfect.

The story itself is only slightly above average, homedude just wants to go home and see his kids and can’t let go of his dead wife. Nothing we haven’t seen before. There are a few twists, but by the time they unfold, you’ve already had it figured out for quite some time. This is all good enough, but not the selling point of the movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio leads this film very well, but that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, he’s one of the most talented actors out there. Ellen Page seems good enough, but as much as I love her, I feel like she only took this role in an attempt to try a more serious and less cute role after the last few flicks she’s been in. You know, to try to break away from the typecast she’s going on right now. It was nice to have Cillian Murphy be a part of this, I’ve been wanting to see more from him and he was well-suited for this film.

Inception brings with it a few pretty neat action sequences that weren’t expected. There’s the standard car chase, gun fight type stuff, but then there’s this awesome anti-gravity fight with Joseph Gordon-Levitt being a bit more badass than I ever expected him to be. Awesome.

There’s a lot of hype around this movie right now and I’d have to say that it lives up to much of it. This film really shouldn’t blow anyone’s mind, it just shouldn’t. But it will suck you in, if  you let it.

Rating: A-

PS: I feel like I’ve been giving a lot of As lately. Too much?

I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.

Ellen Page is awesome and I love her, but I feel like sometimes that innocent little girl, deer in the headlights look she normally pulls off so well doesn’t always fit. In Whip It, it only felt appropriate about half the time. The look felt overused and Bliss (Ellen Page) seemed like she was more confident than her face was showing in a lot of scenes. I don’t think the problem was Ellen Page so much as it was Drew Barrymore’s directing. Okay fine, I just don’t want to fault Ellen Page. Deal with it.

I don’t know, I really don’t have much else to say about this one.

Rating: B

PS: Andrew Wilson should change his name to Beef Surpreme in real life because that’s all I see when I see him.

I really wanted to see this movie when it was in theaters, but I had never gotten around to it. Once it came out, it seemed to fly under a lot of people’s radars and didn’t seem to get too much attention despite getting a few raving reviews here and there.

I was kind of expecting a lot from this movie in a smart comedy kind of way and I can’t help but feel a little let down by it. After Juno, I’ve been really all about Ellen Page after not really caring about her too much before that. I think she’s really cute and I like her disposition when she acts. She also exudes the feeling of her being a normal person instead of some egotistical Hollywood actress. She definitely was on top of her game for Smart People and was exceptionally cute even for playing a conservative, studies-too-much-and-has-no-friends conservative. So no qualms there.

Dennis Quaid played the overly full-of-himself, better-than-everyone-else college professor that isn’t happy with his life at all role a bit too well. Almost made me fear for what I may become in twenty years if I don’t stop hating everyone. I’m just hoping that not taking myself seriously at all will help offset that a little.

But overall, I feel like something just wasn’t there. It was a good movie that I would probably watch again and wouldn’t turn off if I was flipping through the TV and saw it on. The problem though is that it was just that, a good movie. Not a great movie. I can probably blame too high of expectations for this one, but I can’t really pick out what else I wanted from it. Maybe someone different casted for Dennis Quaid’s character’s girlfriend instead of Sarah Jessica Parker? She actually acted pretty well, but I just can’t stand her at all. In fact, I usually cringe when I see her.

Rating: C+

One of the movies I was the most hyped about all year was Juno and it turned out to be everything that I could have hoped for. It was really funny and incredibly cute without being cheesy at all.

Ellen Page had a great performance and Michael Cera was very on par with himself. His role was a lot lesser than I had expected, but it was good that way. The whole movie was very focused on Ellen Page’s character.

The soundtrack was really cute too. The thing that I noticed though was that it seemed like the music was much more in the foreground than is normal in movies. It was mixed pretty high in relation to everything else, but it was kind of awesome actually and added a lot to the whole “indie” feel of the movie.