INCEPTION / ****

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: July 16, 2010
Genre: Sci-Fi Action
Running Time: 148 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Is there any doubt that Christopher Nolan is the most ingenious and exciting director working today? After his timeline-bending breakthrough “Memento,” the engrossing “Insomnia,” the atmospheric “The Prestige,” and his reinvention of the Batman franchise with “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” Nolan has a resume that any director would envy.

Now Nolan presents “Inception,” the highly anticipated follow-up to the third highest grossing film of all-time. The plot has been shrouded in secrecy, and with good reason. To try and explain the plot will result in the necessity to go into great detail, and without seeing the movie these details would be hard to comprehend. Even having seen the movie the details are hard to comprehend. Nolan has found a way to combine breathtaking action sequences and visual effects with a complex, arresting story.

I will do my best to explain what I can, without giving away too much. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a man who specializes in a very unique kind of theft. He’s what’s known as an Extractor, someone who invades a person’s subconscious via their dreams and steals their ideas. If this sounds a little confusing, well, it is. But one of the great joys in Nolan’s screenplay is that it takes the time to explain every detail about how the process works.

There’s a deeper level of Extracting that’s called Inception, which involves going into someone’s subconscious and planting an idea there so well that the person will wake up convinced it was their idea. They have to go three levels deep to get there – a dream within a dream within a dream. Many claim this is impossible, but Cobb knows he can do it. How does he know? That I won’t reveal.

A rich businessman named Saito (Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe) wants Cobb to perform Inception on his chief business rival Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy). Saito promises that if Cobb can successfully complete this task, he will make it possible for him to “go home.” Details of “home” for Cobb reveal themselves slowly throughout the film, so once again, I won’t reveal them here.

From here Cobb assembles a team to work with. There’s right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); the Architect Ariadne (Oscar nominee Ellen Page); master of deception Eames (Tom Hardy); the Chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and Saito himself, who insists on joining him.

What makes “Inception” profoundly engaging is how the screenplay piles layers on top of layers, mimicking the dream layers that the characters are going through. Since Cobb is the one most involved with the target’s dream, his own subconscious, tortured by the loss of his wife Mal (Oscar winner Marion Cotillard), often collides with the target’s dreams. Cobb hides his pain from everyone except Ariadne, who gains unprecedented access to his psyche.

The film delves deeply into the possibilities of the human mind, which are literally endless. The way dreams are visualized and timelines are explored are absolutely brain melting in the best possible way. The performances are absolutely perfect across the board; Cotillard handles the most emotionally complex part with astonishing confidence and grace. DiCaprio and Page make a terrific team, while Watanabe, Hardy, Gordon-Levitt, Rao, Murphy, Tom Berenger and Michael Caine are perfectly cast.

However, I think Christopher Nolan is the true star of this movie. It’s absolutely time that he starts to enter the conversation as one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time. “Inception” defies all expectations, and should nab several Oscar nominations. This is one of the best films of the year.

Theater: Rave Motion Pictures Festival Plaza 16, Montgomery, AL
Time: 1201 am
Date: July 15, 2010 (quality check)

Theater: Carmike Horizon Cinema 10, Traverse City, MI
Time: 1010 pm
Date: July 22, 2010

SHUTTER ISLAND / ***½

Distributor: Paramount
Release Date: February 19, 2010
Genre: Period Drama
Running Time: 138 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Martin Scorsese made an unfathomably good string of films – “Mean Streets” in 1973, “Taxi Driver” in 1976, “New York, New York” in 1977, “Raging Bull” in 1980, and “The King of Comedy” in 1982. These films cemented De Niro as one of the most talented actors of his generation, and helped earn him a spot on the all-time great list as well.

In the early ‘00s, Scorsese found another muse: Leonardo DiCaprio. While “Titanic” made DiCaprio a world-wide star, it did damage his “street cred” in certain circles. With “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” and “The Departed,” DiCaprio regained that “street cred” and established himself as one of the premier actors working today; with three Oscar nominations already under his belt, a win can’t be too far behind.

The latest Scorsese / DiCaprio collaboration is the suspense thriller “Shutter Island,” based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. The film takes place in 1954 on an island used as a prison for the criminally insane. U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) show up to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. Despite heavy security and no obvious escape routes, the woman is nowhere to be found. “It’s as if she evaporated right through the walls,” Dr. Cawley (Oscar winner Ben Kingsley) says.

After receiving resistance from the workers on the island, Daniels and Aule try to leave, but find that a storm is keeping them on the island. After the rainstorm other things start keeping them on the island. Strange things start happening. Daniels may or may not be losing his mind.

Some complained that the twists and turns in “Shutter Island” were predictable, and I’m actually not going to argue that. However I am going to argue that it does not detract from the film, which is extremely well made and doesn’t resort to cheap tactics to build its suspense.

DiCaprio is terrific in the lead role, and he gets a lot of help from his supporting cast. Ruffalo, Kingsley, Oscar nominee Max von Sydow, Oscar nominee Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson, Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine, John Carroll Lynch, and Elias Koteas are all extremely memorable with very little screen time.

This is the first horror type movie that Scorsese has directed, and he shows that his artistry knows no bounds. He truly is one of the greatest directors of all-time.

Theater: RDM Westroads 14, Omaha, NE
Time: 135 pm
Date: March 31, 2010