"The Matrix" by way of "Mission:Impossible" via "Ocean's 11" ; one of the best for the 21st century!

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2010)

INCEPTION (2010) **** Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Talulah Riley. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan's mind-blowing, trippy sci-fi thriller about infiltrators of dreams echoes many past films – "The Matrix" by way of "Mission:Impossible" via "Ocean's 11" easily could have been the pitch – but the simple fact that it is a visionary at his peak of incorporating both digital and largely practically visual effects lands him in the pantheon of truly extraordinary filmmakers such as Kubrick, Spielberg, and Hitchcock – with his blend of psychological metaphors (the ultimate 'MacGuffin' ala Hitch is the dreams themselves! – Life is indeed such a dream. DiCaprio continues to delve into inner angst with his haunted agent of dreamscapes and nightmares while the ethereal Cotillard is his avatar of grief and redemption of memories past; truly haunting. The aforementioned state-of-the-art set pieces – take your pick; for me the hotel corridor sequence with Gordon-Levitt is one for the archives – stand alone just for the jaw-dropping beauty of destruction and cataclysmic events overall (whether that be literal or again metaphorical; it works on so many levels). A film that truly demands your patience and above all attention; see it again and again and you'll see what I mean. One of the year's best films and arguably one of the best for the 21st century.