A year ago, Nolan mezmerized the world with the action-filled The Dark Knight, And his ability to masquerade an extremely good action hero film as a modern masterpiece.  This is what Nolan does.  It’s his talent and livlihood.  He makes the action genre seem new again.  There’s nothing genuinely new in Inception.  The marvel of the film, is that he makes it seem like there’s something there that we’ve never seen before, when we actually have.

The story, which is also penned by Nolan, follows a remarkable man named Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays the same, emotionally haunted character he played in Shutter Island.  Cobb is one of the leading players in a new field of sub-conscious corporate espionage.  He explores the dreams of high-powered people, in order to steal their ideas, and secrets in the world of their dreams, when the subconscious is at its most susceptible.  This business, as you can imagine, is both dangerous and lucrative.

Cobb is married to Mal, represented by Marion Cotillard.  I say represented, because Mal isn’t actually a character in the film, but rather a representation of Cobb’s psyche.  Is this getting confusing?  Be prepared, the film is as well.  I won’t reveal too many plot points, because doing so would ruin the magic that Nolan has created here.  I will say, that due to criminal charges, Cobb is not allowed to return to the US, and congruently, his children, who live there.  Cobb is presented with an opportunity, the chance to not only steal an idea from someone, but plant one in someone’s head without this person knowing.  Cobb is, unfortunately, an undeveloped character.  I say undeveloped because he is someone I would personally love to know more about.

Cobb assembles a solid team.  There’s Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt), Cobb’s best friend.  There’s Ariadne (Ellen Page), the new-comer “architect” of these dream worlds.  She’s new, but extremely gifted.  There’s Eames (Tom Hardy of RocknRolla fame), and Saito (Ken Watanabe), the rich gentlemen and CEO hiring Cobb to insert this idea into the new CEO of his rival company.

We mustn’t forget Cillian Murphy who plays Fischer Jr., this new young CEO.

There’s much ambiguity in the rules of the worlds Nolan creates.  He allows for a science which creates the techonlogy of “group dreams.”  Basically, an acid trip where all those tripping (and connected to the same machine) are allowed to experience together.  This all occurs in the dream state.  A dream state which is curiously mundane.  My dreams do little to imitate rational life.  But in Nolan’s world, somehow, this does not need explanation.

To explain the plot in plain terms would be to say that the Cobb’s team members have to synchronize events in a dream, within a dream, within a dream, within a subconscious.  And in each of these states, there is a different speed of time.  Again, this is confusing, I reiterate that there is much that I missed in my first viewing of Inception. The mischief this team gets into leads them from the downtown streets of a metropolis, to the confines of a extremely chic hotel, to snowy mountain tops, to a crumbling and abandoned city.

There are explosions, drama, a score that instructs the viewer on how to feel.  All of this is nothing new.  But again, I say, this is where Nolan is most talented, but falls short of a master of film.  He takes what we’ve seen a million times before, puzzles, mystery, characters that aren’t fully developed, and makes it all seem intriguing, and takes a two hour and twenty two minute run times, and makes it feel like all I want is more.

The technical achievements of Inception deserve the most praise.  There is a particularly stunning fight seen in a hotel between all sorts of “projections” and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, in which the pull of gravity is shifting constantly making their world spin over and over.  The effects here are breathtaking, and in today’s screening, I was truly reminded of the importance of summer blockbusters.

There’s nothing visionary about Inception, but that doesn’t mean it was deftly directed, with brilliant performances, and a mindbending plot that will leave you completely in awe of this director.

4 out of 4 stars

The tale of An American Crime is based on a true story, and it’s really one of the most disturbing crimes in American history.  If you don’t know about Gertrude Baniszewski and what she did to Sylvia Likens, read it here on wikipedia.  It will blow your mind.  Because I was aware of the backstory, I desperately wanted to see this at the 2007 festival.  Showing conflicts made this impossible, but it’s finally out on DVD.  Catherine Keener headlines as Baniszewski, Ellen Page plays Silvia, James Franco play Baniszewski uber-loser of a boyfriend, and there are a few other respected actors (like Bradley Whitford) that sprinkle cameos here and there.

Basically, Baniszewski accepts two teenage girls as borders in her home that she shares with her six biological children.  She’s ill (it’s not made clear with malady), there’s no man supporting the family, and she may have a small prescription drug problem (mind you this all takes place in Indiana in the sixties).  Sylvia and her sister are left with Baniszewski for twenty dollars a week, while her parents tour with a carnival (I’m not kidding).  Seeking an outlet for the bitterness cause by the steaming pile that life has served her, Baniszewski starts abusing Sylvia: beating her with belts, rounding up neighborhood children to sear words in her body with a hot needle like ‘I’m a prostitute and proud of it.’  The horrors piled on Sylvia are unending, and unbearable.

The story itself, is as dark and brooding as real life allows.  It’s like Hostel, but this actually happened.  The problem is, O’Haver butchered it like Bush butchered our economy.  Central acts that should have been the most powerful, lacked any sort of intensity.  First class performances by Page and Keener (who have both yet to let me down in a film) couldn’t save this middle-of-the-road waste of time.  The script chose to gloss over the bitter truth of the story in lieu of unreliable, first-person narrated fantasies, unending shots of Keener crying on a couch, and a whole lot of other boring elements that makes this film not even worth a rental.  The end was so cushioned against the terror and dread of the real story, that you actually don’t really care what happens to Sylvia.  It’s an American crime to watch this film.

1 out of 4 stars

The Tracey Fragments is filmed all ‘stream of consciousness’ with the screen constantly showing between one and 20 (by my count, at least) different views of the same, or sometimes different thing.  It’s like McDonald saw an episode of 24 and thought, ‘if splitting the screen three ways is awesome, twenty five ways will be soooooo bitchin’!'  In case you were wondering, it’s not.  It’s annoying, confusing, and when it’s at its best, you just feel like you’re watching a bunch of security monitors.

Tracey follows the protagonist Tracey, the ‘normal fifteen year old girl, who hates herself’ as she travels around the city, looking for her younger brother who disappeared on her watch.  In her wandering, the film vaguely references domestic abuse, drug use, murder, prostitution, molestation, and rape, but doesn’t really have the balls to make a statement or even to actually have it happen in the movie!  Since it’s stream of consciousness, we don’t know what is really happening, and what is in her head.  I personally hope that Tracey’s transvestite (or transgendered, I’m not sure) therapist really happened, because that was one manish looking woman.

Remember the aggravating, barely audible voice-overs from Terrance Malick’s The New World?  McDonald took that concept and multiplied it by 20 as well.  Sometimes there’s five or six people muttering inaudible nonsense.  And when you can hear it clearly, it waxes all pseudo-philosophical about the circle of life and how horses die, turn into glue that kids eat, so the horse eventually becomes human, and frustrating bullshit like that.  The only vaguely non-annoying trait of this whole things was Ellen Page’s fantastic acting.  She really is brilliant.

It’s not that I’m against anything that’s off the beaten path.  I don’t expect a linear, orthodox narrative, I even kind of liked Aronofsky’s completely un-understandable The Fountain, because it had it’s interesting moments.  I mean come on, the Tree of Life sprouts out of Hugh Jackman’s stomach on the top of a Mayan pyramid in the end.  But Tracey provides us with nothing interesting, nothing new to say, and leaves you feeling angry you watched it.

0.5 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 40% – Cream of the Crop: 56%

Rated R for strong language throughout, some sexual content and violence.

It’s unfortunate that this film doesn’t really come together.  I’m a big Ellen Page fan, and even she was tied down by the restraints this film placed on her and the other cast members.  These restraints include the script that comes from us from first time writer Mark Poirier, which is witty, and clever, but one hundred minutes of stinging zingers and caustic sarcasm do not a good film make.

The rest of the cast didn’t hold much promise for me, so I didn’t expect much.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised by Sarah Jessica Parker’s performance.  She got all frumpy (well, she wasn’t all fashionista, at least) and played a toned down part that wasn’t all self-important, and I liked it. This whole mess was accompanied by one of the most annoying, acoustic, emo-bull-shit soundtracks I’ve ever heard.  It’s like Murro was afraid the audience (apparently he didn’t expect smart people to see his film) wouldn’t catch on that each scene was touched with a tinge of melancholy, but also a little hope.  See the tracklisting here for songs not to listen to.  Ever.

The whole thing wasn’t a loss, there were some funny moments where I actually laughed out loud (but just a little).  And if you’re one for happy endings, then this is for you!  But for me, it wasn’t worth waiting to get there.

1.5 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 49% – Cream of the Crop: 48%

Rated R for language, brief teen drug and alcohol use, and for some sexuality.