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Movie Monday: Inception Reloaded


inception2.JPGChristopher Nolan’s mind-bending, genre-blending, sci-fi-heist thriller Inception ruled the weekend box office for a second week in a row, taking in another $43.5 million and holding off Angelina Jolie’s Salt, which nabbed $36.5 million. In its third week of release, Despicable Me clocked in at $24.1 million. All in all, it was a rare summer weekend in which the top three films were all original stories with nary a sequel, remake or pre-existing franchise in sight. And despite Jolie’s latest action debut, Inception continues to be the summer movie many folks are buzzing about.

In a recent interview with MTV, Nolan talked about how Star Wars has been his inspirational benchmark as a filmmaker, and how he hopes to give viewers of his movies a similar experience.

[Star Wars] completely changed movies for me. It changed everything, really. It created a world that lived on in your mind after you saw the film and seemed to have this limitless potential. I think, for me, my whole career in making films, really every time I set out to make a film, I want to try and give somebody in the audience the experience I had watching that film, where it really felt like anything was possible in that world. That's a really extraordinary experience to have as a moviegoer.

Now whenever I hear a moviemaker saying, in effect, that he wants to make the next Star Wars, I think, Good luck. Few movies have changed the game the way George Lucas’ 1977 space opera did.

That said, my wife and I took in Inception this weekend. As with most hyper-hyped movies these days (Avatar, anyone?), I expected to be disappointed.

I wasn’t, at least not from a storytelling perspective. (Some of its suicide-driven violence deserves more attention than I’ll give it here. So read Paul Asay’s review for that.) The sheer originality of Nolan’s film about thieves invading dreams actually exceeded my expectations. Not everyone feels that way, of course. Not even all of my colleagues. Some actively disliked the thing. But for my part, as I walked out of the theater, I told my wife I had never seen anything quite like Inception. It might not have made quite the impact on me that Star Wars made when I was 6. But it was in the ballpark in terms of sheer storytelling audacity. For me it joins a very short list of movies that reset the narrative boundary markers on what can be achieved in a film.

And that brings me to this question: What movies, new or old, have had a similar effect on you? What stories left your jaw on the floor?