nolan almost at his finest

Rating: 10/10 (29 August 2015)

this is nolan's 2nd best movie of all time, and i think you can infer what i think is nolan's best. the originality of the script and the concept that this brilliant movie was conceived from is absolutely stunning. the cinematography, again with the nolan and wally pfister pair that stunned us in the dark knight trilogy. this has the aspect of nolan movies that i always like: there's a lot of information that is relatively essential to the movie that is easy to forget as more and more information is piled on. then the second time you watch it, you're still able to absorb all of the amazing elements of this incredible journey, but know everything is coming together and you can actually understand it a lot better.
the scene switching as the story is narrated from every level of the dream is magnificent, as we cut from yusuf trying to escape from the projections in the first dream, to arthur's dilemma with protecting the sleeping team in the second dream, to trying to actually plant the idea in the third dream, to everything that happens in limbo. while this may not count as one scene, because its literally half of the movie, its still indescribably outstanding.
even though the movie wasn't as confusing as i was told it would be, with this complex of a plot, there are bound to be plot holes. i only detected a couple, but they were minor, and nowhere near as obvious as the ones in the dark knight rises. but even if there were more, they probably wouldn't make this film that much worse, just separate a crowd of fans who will immediately dub the movie as terrible, as the same crowd did with the dark knight rises.
the only thing that had potential for bringing the movie down was the performances. they weren't bad, more just mediocre. none of the supporting roles really called for major performances, except for marion cotillard in a few instances, and while she didn't do what i thought her best was, she was fine. but this probably isn't even in leonardo dicaprios top 10 performances, as he was maybe even a little less than mediocre for most of the movie.
some people thought the ending was ambiguous, or left things a little unclear. was the top wobbling, and about to fall, or was it going to stay up forever? i think this was more to be left to the viewers imagination, and i think it was definitely about to fall.