Release date: 07/16/2010

Length: 148′

Personal Rating (1-10): 9

You know there are pairs of Directors and Actors that just make a good job. We have Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio and some others also. Well for “Inception” we have a mix in the couples. Christopher Nolan teams up with Marty’s favorite, Leonardo DiCaprio and they do a great job!

“Inception” is a a thrilling sci-fi movie  that brings in front of us the possibility of accessing someone’s dreams and controlling them in order to find out information that the subconscious of the subject can deliver. There are several techniques of manipulation and Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is one of the best extractors in the field. Due to some past mistakes Cobb is now unable to set foot in mother land USA and get reunited with his kids and when he gets the chance to get his record clean he takes it without hesitation even if that means that he has to do the impossible. He has to plant an idea in someone’s head. From here the action starts. Cobb creates a team that will allow him to get close to his subject and make him go into a triple phase dream. Of course things start to go wrong and the team has to face different issues with their plan, including daemons from Cobb’s past.

“Inception” is breath taking, it sticks you to your chair and it feels like you are there. The action scenes are unbelievably well done and the entire script (big thumbs up to Nolan for writing this) is so well figured out, down to the last details, that even if you know that what you see is not possible (yet) while you are watching the movie you believe everything, your mind just opens up and can ignore laws of gravity or plain physics, just like the movie implies you can do in your dreams.

What I especially liked about the production of the movie, is the soundtrack. Unlike other movies, where songs are played to fill gaps and sometimes redirect you to the emotional state they are trying to transmit, the musical background in Inception is there not to fill gaps, but to give more meaning to a scene. Even if characters are engaged in a dialog, this is doubled and enhanced by some music in the background. If you ask me, this is an art.

“Inception” is the type of movie that bewilders you. You get out of the cinema and ask yourself, what the f*** just happened? Do I love this movie, Do I loath it? Everybody is talking about it in the first phase, you hear people telling to one and other “you are in a dream”, you hear comments, bad and good. This is the sign of a good movie. If after you stand up from your chair you don’t think of the fastest route home and something to eat, but instead want to know the other’s opinion, then the movie was a good one.

The originality of the movie is undoubted and yet somehow a comparison with “Shutter Island” is inevitable. Even though, there are different scripts, different plots, different Directors, somehow the general tense atmosphere, the thin line between fiction and reality and the main character that is trapped in two worlds and can not make the difference anymore brings the two movies together.

Recommendation: Go to the cinema and see “Inception”. It is worth it. For now, watch the trailer:

Release Date: 02/19/2010

Length: 138′

Personal Rating (1-10): 7

Website

The “dynamic duo” does it again! Martin Scorsese teams up with his favorite actor Leonardo DiCaprio to make the thriller / horror “Shutter Island“.

Shutter Island is a sort of prison for very dangerous people with severe mental illnesses isolated on, as the name suggests, an island with access to and from by the use of a ferryboat. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is called on the island together with new partner Chuck Aule to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. As soon as they get on the island things tend to get weird and everything changes for the two detectives, who start to suspect each other of betrayal and in general mess with their mind. I can not continue with the plot without giving away facts from the movie so I’ll just continue with my regular bits of mind and opinions regarding this movie.

Scorsese manages to make out of  ”Shutter Island” a mixture of real and fantasy that will confuse you in such a way that you won’t know what to believe anymore. Leonardo DiCaprio makes a wonderful role here and all his character’s visions, dreams and flashbacks all build up pressure for the movie making a somewhat good thriller all the more thrilling and you will surely flinch in your chair / bed more then once. Notable is also the music background witch is so good for the scenes that it will help with the tension more then the images do.

On the other hand I did not like the Nazi bull shit and the images that haunt Teddy. I think that they could have invented something more ingenious then that to make the brain of Marshal Daniels easily “breakable”. Whatever story they would have chosen I’m quite sure that Leonardo would have been up to the task, but the one with the war drama is a bit to handy.

Another big plus or point of controversy for others is the ending. As we get close to the finish, “Shutter Island” brings in front of us a total new perspective that will put everything under a big question mark. For this very reason and because of the closing scene / image I must say I did not fully understand the ending, what is the truth actually.

All in all “Shutter Island” is a good movie with sustained action and one in which you look at flashback as pieces of evidence and not just time killers. Martin Scorsese followed his habbit of making good movies and did not disappoint me with this one.

Verdict: worth seeing. Reason: the merge between reality and fiction is admirably done here and the story is interesting and pleasant to follow. Warning: “Shutter Island” has bits of sort of a horror movie in it and images that are shocking, so for those that do not go along well with this kind of actions it might be better to watch “Valentine’s Day”

Thanks to Cinemagia for supplying images. Trailer bellow:

With the ocasion of the Super Bowl, three movies (from what I know now) will have short trailers presented during the comercial time during half time. They will probably have the bigest rating a trailer has ever had so this is a big deal. The lucky winers are “Shuter Island”, “The Last Airbender” and “Robin Hood”. Thanks to the Super Bowl this movies now have a chance at beating Avatar in the box office. Anyway, here they are: