Last week I saw Christopher Nolan’s latest, INCEPTION, but I had never seen his debut, FOLLOWING, so I put it to the top of my Netflix queue.  I tried to avoid reading anything about the plot or story, and assumed that the plot would twist time, etc., which it did.  Like most non-Batman Nolan films, you would be hard pressed to describe it in a single sentence.

Although the movie was definitely not feel-good, I ended up really liking the very low frills, low budget aspect of the film and Nolan’s choice to use black & white.  Besides writing and directing, Nolan also did the camera work himself.  If like me you saw INCEPTION first, you will immediately recognize the names of one of the main characters of FOLLOWING, Cobb.

The main character is Bill, someone with not much to do who decides just to follow random people one day to see what their days are like.  I thought that sounded like a great way for a loafer to spend time and a clever starting point for a movie.

There are three distinct story lines, which you can distinguish by Bill’s appearance.  They are twisted together, but in the correct balance of providing clever story telling, but in an understandable way.

FOLLOWING is a movie that almost demands a second viewing because of both its plot twists and its very short 82-minute running time.

I think Christopher Nolan with INCEPTION has cemented himself as director of the decade having kicked it off with MEMENTO.  Like he did with 2008’s THE DARK KNIGHT, he has made every other movie this summer seem like hack amateur derivative waste of film.  INCEPTION is the kind of movie that makes you leave the theater discussing, debating, and most of trying to figure out what in fact did I just see?  And do I understand any of it?

I know I recently declared TOY STORY 3 a “flawless masterpiece.”  Then a few weeks later you see a movie like INCEPTION that just grabs your mind and removes you from your own reality and puts you in a new, exciting, fascinating one and you are left to conclude only that not all movies can be judged by the same criteria.

You will burn calories watching INCEPTION.  The movie builds somewhat slowly.  I think no doubt the opening quarter of the movie is its weakest, but once the viewer learns what exactly the meaning of the title of the film is, Nolan does not hold back the pace at all, but rather goes at maximum storytelling, action, mind bending speed.  Reality in INCEPTION, and place in consciousness, needs to be kept track of on a scorecard.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb in perhaps a not too distant future where people can connect to each other in induced dreaming.  The point is that information can be extracted easier from a person’s dreams than when she/he is awake.  Yet it is not like taking candy from a baby.  This is where the sandbox for INCEPTION starts to get defined and I found it fascinating just what the rules are and how one should operate in these dream invasions.

Only Cobb has any backstory at all, but the other actors are all good enough to make you care about them even after only brief introductions.

I saw this film in IMAX and Hans Zimmer’s score shook my seat on many occasions.  It complimented and heightened the action perfectly.  I heard someone say Nolan was the Hitchcock of his generation, who is of course my favorite director of all time, so I, myself, would not make such a comparison lightly.  However, I would have to agree.  Nolan knows how to tell a complex, enthralling, and original tale.

INCEPTION is the kind of movie that will no doubt reward multiple views.  Try and make at least one of those times in IMAX.

I may not have ever of seen the full Rated R version of PREDATOR before as I never saw poor Carl Weathers with his arm blown off before!  I have strong memories of this movie, and of it being just a pure action movie free of gimmicks with an iconic alien hunter character and Arnold Schwarzenegger being his simple best.  Some 20+ years since its release, it holds up as good, and really better, than any modern sci-fi action adventure movie, if they even exist anymore.

You can say, and I can say, how CGI has ruined movies, especially action and sci-fi movies, and it’s true.  CGI has hurt movies more than it has shown us new worlds and new things possible on screen I believe.  That said, PREDATOR has one of the coolest computer generated special effects in film history, the bending of light around the Predator’s suit.  That is just one iconic thing about the Predator.  When you add in the triangle of red dot laser targeting, the seeing only of infrared heat shots, the extendable arm swords, the clicking sound it makes, and it’s at the time totally unique looks (oft copied now), all these add up to a movie icon that is rarely established today.  Showing the audience something they have not seen before, a truly rare feat.

Just eight people in a jungle being hunted.  One by one.  You can actually see the action and follow it easily, there is no mess of quick edits and cuts so that you have know idea what is happening but you know someone is getting hurt and/or dying.

Arnold has basically only three one liners, only one is clunky, and the last one is a classic movie cuss phrase, i.e. “You are one ugly ************.”  The dialogue is actually good, and funny.  ”If it bleeds, we can kill it.”  Great line delivered superbly by Arnold.  ”I ain’t got time to bleed,” funny in its absurdity.  I ha-ed loudly.

The use of the natural environment, the use of stuntmen, the entirely plausible action sequences and fights (save maybe for the raid on the village, but that’s just human on human combat).  Seeing super brave and unflappable men become as scared as a civilian when the tables turn and the enemy is brutal, stealthy, and unidentified.

I mostly re-watched PREDATOR now in preparation for PREDATORS coming out next weekend, which has some promise at least in its cast and director and premise.  I will be able to compare it very well to the original, if it is at least half as good, I will be pleased.

TOY STORY 3 is a flawless masterpiece.  A movie that is just so right in its score, in the attention to details, in its action, in its emotional moments, and in its story.  This was also my first time to see a 3D movie outside of a theme park since my childhood, perhaps it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon?  I feel the 3D genie is fully out of the bottle and one better get used to donning those 3D glasses.  Did it enhance my TOY STORY 3 viewing experience?

That is hard to say.  At first it was very distracting and hard to get used to.  Then I was not even aware of it and just engrossed in the movie.  It’s not 3D like things fly right by your head, it is basically the characters in three dimensions within a still relatively flat plane.  I wanted to see it in IMAX 3D, but of course the IMAX projector was down.

Nevertheless, from the opening frame TOY STORY 3 was pure joy, pure exhilaration, pure laughs, and pure emotion.  Is it wrong for a movie to be so feel-good?  I hope not because I really needed to see a movie that is perhaps the most feel-good of all time.  By the end, everything just feels so right.

A nod was made to Hayao Miyazaki, the only person who can equal or best Pixar in animated storytelling and imagination, in the form of my beloved TOTORO being a background character!

Other things that standout from TOY STORY 3, I will simply just say:  ”the monkey,” “the tortilla,” Ken, “death by monkeys”

Before I went to the theater I peaked at IMDB and was surprised to see TOY STORY 3 currently ranked the #6 all-time movie.  As I sit here now, I am not surprised at all.  I cannot recommend the movie enough.