Inception

Well, it looks like the summer movie season is complete.

I say that because all the movies I've been waiting for this summer have been released. Usually, I can identify at least 6 or 7 movies during the summer that I am legit excited about. This year? At the start of the summer, there were only 3 movies that made me think, "I need to see that." The list? Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, and Inception. How sad is it that I'm really not enthused about any more movies this summer?

TS3 & IM2 hopefully require no explanation for my anticipation. If you know me, Inception shouldn't either. I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan, Inception's writer and director. You might've heard of some of his last few films: Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight. If you haven't seen any one of these movies, stop, go seek them out, and watch them. They are legen - wait for it - dary! (Shout out to How I Met Your Mother, which I've been netflixing lately; they use that phrase a lot. You can thank HIMYM and crappy summer offerings for my lack of more frequent movie posts.)

So when you tell me that Nolan is doing his first original work since his early film Following and is working with a few staples of his previous hits (some of this film's stars include Michael Caine, Ken Wantanabe, and Cilian Murphy), sign me up. I'm there.

And the film delivers on so many levels. The acting is absolutely top notch. Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, the aforementioned Murphy and Caine and Wantanabe . . . it was practically impossible to mess up with that cast; most are Oscar winners or nominees. The visuals are really strong and help bring the fake yet real world to life. I also appreciated the film's score. It added to the drama.

The plot . . . well, I really can't get into the plot too much. Essentially, DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man who can use your dreams to access information in your mind. To say much more would ruin some of the film's core surprises, so I won't do that.

What I will say is that when I finished it reminded me of two things. First, the dream argument, which anyone who has studied philosophy should be able with reasonable recollection to recount. The dream argument has been philosophized by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, all of whom beg the question, "how do I know that when I am awake I'm not dreaming and that when I'm dreaming I'm not really awake? Which then is my reality?" Philosophy 101 baby!

The second thing I thought of was how I felt after this film like I did after watching the first Matrix movie for the first time. It was like, "I think I know what happened, but I'm not sure; I'll have to watch it again. And even if I thought I knew, it would be darn near impossible to explain it to anyone else." Suffice it to say that you just need to see it and judge it for yourself.

Inception requires its audience to be mentally engaged throughout, so if you're one of those people that goes to the movies to be entertained without having to do any thinking, which is fine, then skip this one or wait for DVD. While I appreciate every once in a while watching a movie that does not require any of my brain fuel to be burned, I appreciate that much more a film that requires me to keep my thinking cap on the whole time. Why you may ask. Because the mind-numbing films severely outnumber the thought-provoking ones.

Inception solidifies Nolan as one of the best filmmakers out there right now. And it only makes me more excited for Nolan's future projects, the next of which will be his third entry into the Batman mythology. My mind eagerly awaits.