It seems that the film critics' circle, with their universal applause and praise for recent blockbuster spectacles like Avatar and Inception, have tuned into some Joseph Campbell-esque collective consciousness that the rest of the thinking, film-viewing population are not privy to. I presume that they have fallen victim to the debilitating, enchanting, hypnotizing charms of those suave studios and big (but shameless) marketing schemes. So sad, especially for self-proclaimed professionals and experts (funny). I simply can't believe how little dissension there was among the ranks of popular critics in regard to these two films. Even the more seemingly credible, or definitively "indy", critical reviews were soft and approving. Avatar is decidedly some of the worst cinematic dribble that I have suffered through in years (it would have been an average story had it been written for submission to a junior high literary magazine), and Inception, though one hell of a spectacle (and relatively interesting concept), was an average movie at best - with grueling expository dialogue and a formula story line with no original character development. And yet, the critics (even Village Voice, NY Times, Ebert, and the likes - shame on you) universally praised these forgettable, unchallenging films. Where is the young rebellious Ebert of old that stood up against popular opinion and hailed the cinematic excellence of Bonnie and Clyde - risking career and credibility? We need dissension.
REVIEW: Is Inception This Year’s Masterpiece? Dream On
If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we’ve entered an era in which movies can no longer be great. They can only be awesome, which isn’t nearly the same thing.
In Inception, Nolan does the impossible, the unthinkable, the stupendous: He folds a mirror version of Paris back upon itself; he stages a fight sequence in a gravity-free hotel room; he sends a train plowing through a busy city street. Whatever you can dream, Nolan does it in Inception. Then he nestles those little dreams into even bigger dreams, and those bigger dreams into gargantuan dreams, going on into infinity, cubed. He stretches the boundaries of filmmaking so that it’s, like, not even filmmaking anymore, it’s just pure “OMG I gotta text myBFF right now” sensation.
Wouldn’t it have been easier just to make a movie?
But that urgent simplicity, that directness of focus, is beyond Nolan: Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities — of both the emotional and intellectual sort — add up to a kind of ADD tedium. This may be a movie about dreams, but there’s nothing dreamlike or evocative about it: Nolan doesn’t build or sustain a mood; all he does is twist the plot, under, over, and back upon itself, relying on Hans Zimmer’s sonic boom of a score to remind us when we should be excited or anxious or moved. It’s less directing than directing traffic.
For the complete review, follow the link: MovieLine Reviews
And, thank you for an honest and intelligent review.
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