{"id":6582,"date":"2010-07-23T15:44:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/friday-night-at-the-movies-inc.html"},"modified":"2010-07-23T15:44:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:44:46","slug":"friday-night-at-the-movies-inc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/friday-night-at-the-movies-inc.html","title":{"rendered":"Friday Night at the Movies: Inception"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Inception.png\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Review: Inception<\/i><\/div>\n
\n

By Travis Greene<\/span><\/p>\n

Written & directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Leonardo
\nDiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 148 minutes. Rated PG-13 for
\nsequences of violence and action throughout.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inception<\/span><\/i>
\nbegins with a shot of a wave crashing into the shore, as Dom Cobb (Leonardo
\nDiCaprio) struggles against the chaos, trying to orient himself against
\nsomething solid. This is as good an introduction to <\/span>Inception<\/span><\/i>‘s themes as any. And themes it has, since
\nit is that rarest of animals: a summer action blockbuster driven by ideas. How
\ndo we know what we know? If we think our dreams are real while we are dreaming
\nthem, how do we know what is real when we are awake? How do our memories come
\nto define our present, and can an idea (guilt, regret, desire) grow to define
\nus and control us?<\/span><\/p>\n

Inception<\/span><\/i>
\ntakes place in a world where the technology exists to enter dreams, and
\ncorporations take advantage of this for corporate espionage.  <\/span>Cobb is a thief who invades the minds
\nof important people to steal their secrets, but he is soon hired for a very
\ndifferent kind of job: not to steal an idea, but to implant one, a
\npresumed-impossible process called inception. But Cobb has his own past
\nexperiences with inception that threaten his ability to pull this off.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a little hard to describe without sounding either silly or
\ncomplicated, but fortunately all these rather abstract and philosophical ideas
\nare suspended on a familiar structure. Inception is a heist movie. It has all
\nthe beats of that genre. There’s the assembling of the team, the formulating a
\nplan to access the impenetrable facility, and the inevitable complications that
\nthreaten the plan once it begins. But because it all takes place in the human
\nmind, director Christopher Nolan can play around with time and physics, often
\nto thrilling effect. One scene in a hallway is particularly impossible to look
\naway from, or indeed breathe during.<\/span><\/p>\n

The well-rounded cast, which includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph
\nGordon-Levitt, and Ellen Page, as well as the reliable DiCaprio, does a great
\njob grounding the heady concepts into believable human interaction, although in
\nthe end the film is more about the ideas than the characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inception<\/span><\/i>
\nwill send you out of the theaters pondering big questions, and not because of
\nsome contrived twist, though its enigmatic final scene is open to
\ninterpretation. It is captivating and entertaining throughout, and deals with
\nimportant issues of how we carry guilt, how we deal with our problems
\nsubconsciously, and how we can operate with epistemic humility in the face of
\nour inherent dependence on perception to experience the world. It continues
\nNolan’s string of movies that are both meaningful and entertaining, and I
\nhighly recommend it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review: Inception By Travis Greene Written & directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 148 minutes. Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action throughout. Inception begins with a shot of a wave crashing into the shore, as Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) struggles against the chaos, trying to orient himself against…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\nFriday Night at the Movies: Inception - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/friday-night-at-the-movies-inc.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friday Night at the Movies: Inception - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Review: Inception By Travis Greene Written & directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 148 minutes. 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