Excellent point, Page certainly distracts us from the performance of DiCaprio.

I think that Christopher Nolan somehow managed to get a barely passable performance out of DiCrapio. This is honestly the first movie with him that didn’t make me want to punch him in the face (then again I didn’t watch Blood Diamond so maybe he actually got slightly better in the recent years).

Then again its possible that I didn’t find him as grating as usual because the atmosphere and the writing was just top notch in this movie.

Or maybe I was just too distracted by Ellen Page to pay attention to Leo’s acting. ;P

I liked the movie and of course came to see your review later. Nice one! ;) The movie has some resemblance with “The Thirteenth Floor” which also (a little SPOILER) has this recursive concept.

But I agree with IceBrain: The plot itself is predictable and would be otherwise uninteresting if it wasn’t for the whole ‘dream within the dream’ concept. I also agree that DiCaprio does not deliver a good performance here.

The Dreamscape similarities are the reason it was on my RedBox list instead of my theater list, well I have to admit that Leo being in it bumped it down a few notches as well. The only time I haven’t wanted to see his character die a horrible death was in Blood Diamond. Reading people’s reviews who seem to have good taste in most of the movies they like I may have to bump it up and see it earlier.

I have to admit that I did not read your review before seeing the movie (to avoid any possible spoilers) – just read it now, returning from seeing that masterpiece of a SciFiThriller.

That was a great movie and a nice review here

@ Rob:
Really?
I thought that last scene was incredibly well written. Were you not intently focussing on the totem, constantly changing your opinion about what it ought to do while eagerly awaiting the outcome? And when the screen suddenly went blank, were you not glad that they didn’t resort to the “whole world is a dream” cliche, but left it to you?
It was a fine crescendo that…..

Definitely the best film of the year thus far. Just didn’t like being left hanging at the end!

It’s a really great film! I saw Inception this past weekend and I’ve been waiting for you to write this review, since its right up your alley. It was inevitable. I’m actually considering giving the film a second go soon.

Tino wrote:

About the gravity thing; could it be as simple as the loss of gravity is just something that Arthur (the guy left on the hotel level) expects to happen, and since he is more or less alone there, it does happen? On the snow level Fischer (the main dreamer) is probably the one directing most of what happens, and he certainly has no expectations of gravity loss.

Good point. The other explanation I read somewhere was that the gravity effects are only noticeable in the dream layer currently underneath the current one and they don’t transfer lower. So only the shifts in gravity originating from the current layer will be felt lower. That’s why Arthur can still deliver the “kick”.

IceBrain wrote:

What bothered me is the deal with the projections: aren’t they supposed to be created by that dream’s dreamer, and attack others? That’s what happened when DiCapprio was showing the shared dreams to Page: the projections didn’t attack him, because he was the dreamer.

But then, the projections in dream-1 (Van) shouldn’t attack the Yusuf, nor should they attack Arthur in the Hotel, nor Eames in the snow, because they’re the dreamers in those cases.

Hmmm… I’m guessing that since the rich guy (what was his name?) was “trained” his subconsciousness was able to inject projections into any dream. I mean, that’s what you would want if you were paying for the training. It would be next to useless if the training only militarized the projections in your own dream, since extraction teams almost always used one of their members as a dreamer, no?

@ Tino:
(spoiler!)
You have to remember that each “dream layer” is dreamt (?) by a different person – there’s an Illustrated Guide.
And the levels are rigid because they’re all designed by the Architect (Page).

What bothered me is the deal with the projections: aren’t they supposed to be created by that dream’s dreamer, and attack others? That’s what happened when DiCapprio was showing the shared dreams to Page: the projections didn’t attack him, because he was the dreamer.

But then, the projections in dream-1 (Van) shouldn’t attack the Yusuf, nor should they attack Arthur in the Hotel, nor Eames in the snow, because they’re the dreamers in those cases.

————-

I think the movie was most interesting in the whole dreams concept, with the concept of different times, the kicks, etc; in the plot itself, I found Memento to be a better movie, with a less predictable storyline and with a more interesting psychological view.

And Guy Pierce does a better job than DiCaprio, imho.