Inception
Academy Award × 4·National Film Registry
Rent/Purchase
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
What critics thought
Inception lands as a genuinely ambitious blockbuster that most critics admired for its structural audacity and immersive world-building, though a vocal minority found its hyper-logical framework too rigid to qualify as true surrealism. The sharpest dividing line was whether Nolan's meticulous rule-setting liberated or suffocated the dream premise — and the deliberately ambiguous ending fueled debate about whether it rewards close reading or simply flatters the audience into thinking they've seen something more profound than they have.
“applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality.”
Justin Chang·Variety
“I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out [...] the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom.”
Michael Phillips·Chicago Tribune
“there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, and too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“Inception is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else.”
David Denby·The New Yorker
“Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing.”
Mark Kermode·BBC Radio 5 Live
Genres
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Cast & Crew
DirectorChristopher Nolan
StarringLeonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Elliot Page
ComposerHans Zimmer
Inception
Academy Award × 4·National Film Registry
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
What critics thought
Inception lands as a genuinely ambitious blockbuster that most critics admired for its structural audacity and immersive world-building, though a vocal minority found its hyper-logical framework too rigid to qualify as true surrealism. The sharpest dividing line was whether Nolan's meticulous rule-setting liberated or suffocated the dream premise — and the deliberately ambiguous ending fueled debate about whether it rewards close reading or simply flatters the audience into thinking they've seen something more profound than they have.
“applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality.”
Justin Chang·Variety
“I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out [...] the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom.”
Michael Phillips·Chicago Tribune
“there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, and too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“Inception is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else.”
David Denby·The New Yorker
“Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing.”
Mark Kermode·BBC Radio 5 Live
Genres
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Cast & Crew
DirectorChristopher Nolan
StarringLeonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Elliot Page
ComposerHans Zimmer
Rent/Purchase