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I rather liked Memento when it first came out, but my opinion of it and of Nolan in general has lessened since, especially with the onslaught of his Batman films. So I was somewhat surprised to find that I unreservedly loved nearly everything about Inception. First, I don't understand accusations that the film is too action-oriented, or isn't enough like some people's conceptions of what a dream should be. The entire film (not just the dreams proper) felt like a dream that I might have had (what I often call my Indiana Jones dreams) and I feel sorry for you if you don't get to have dreams like that from time to time. But more importantly, the film clearly establishes that the dreams are designed by the architect to be the way they are (for the express purpose of international corporate espionage) and that the mark has been trained to resist such subconscious subterfuge (thus explaining all of the armed combatants). It's not meant to be this grand statement on dreams in general, but rather a very specific story that happens to take place in the realm of dreams. So check your expectations at the door.

I loved the score as well, and I felt it helped to know going in that Zimmer's usual bombast here is actually a variation on the Piaf song glacially slowed down, which of course makes perfect sense when you consider the lateral time relativities that the film plays with. This is a terribly clever conceit, but on top of that, I think it just sounds great on its own, and might even be considered something of a comment on other summer-type action films with scores of this ilk.

Even after scrutinizing the film's labyrinthine plot, I'm honestly having a hard time poking holes in its logic. It's meticulously crafted, and what minor plotholes might remain can seemingly be explained away by the idea that the whole thing could just be a dream. In fact, if you consider the very real possibility that the whole plot of birthing the idea in the heir tycoon's brain is just Cobb manipulating his own dreams to convincingly maneuver a way to be with his children in what he can convince himself is reality (even if it isn't really), then any moments of strained credulity take on a kind of tragic quality, as though Cobb is so determined to complete his mission that he will even allow his mind to bend the physical laws that reign over the dream world. Or the whole film could be interpreted to be a dream in a completely innocuous way--perhaps the real Cobb is just a regular guy like me who had a weird, intricate dream one night about losing his family and becoming a mind spy. Or countless other possibilities. I love the ambiguity there.

If I have one complaint about the film though, it's that it was not just two and a half hours of JGL flying through that hotel hallway. Seriously, there was no excuse for that.

And now, to respond to some questions:

mario gauci wrote:I do not accept the fact that this should excuse several illogicalities that bugged me as I was watching it, namely: why would Di Caprio accept a newbie (albeit one as graceful as Page and who had been recommended to him by his father-in-law Caine) as part of the team for one final fling at his ultra-specialized job with an all-important outcome (reuniting him with his long-lost children)?

The prior architect had been taken out of the picture and he couldn't design the dreamscapes himself because then Mal would know about them and sabotage the mission. He needed an architect, and his father recommended someone who was supposedly even better than he had been back in the day.

similarly, how on earth could a mere industrialist (Watanabe) nullify Di Caprio’s murder charges by making one phone call?

If I understood this correctly, all he promised to do was get him through immigration at the airport. If this explanation doesn't work for you, this could perhaps be one of the instances like I was mentioning earlier where Cobb needed to orchestrate a way in his mind to get to his kids in his perceived reality, and this was a way that it could work, even if the logic behind it is somewhat specious.

what was the point of the team risking their lives repeatedly to discover the contents of Poslethwaite’s vault when it has been telegraphed in advance (in that recurring photograph of Murphy as a boy) all along?

Well, the whole point of "inception" is supposed to be that you plant an idea in someone's mind in such a manner that he is convinced it's his own idea. The crew knew what would be in the vault. The whole point was to create an elaborate obstacle course to get there and then have the mark discover what was in the vault for himself.

all movies are the same, this extends to everything else, but i love thinking about it limited to movies. but still, Inception is another man's vision for what is totally going on in Donnie Darko, Waking Life, Southland Tales, Synechdoce New York, Avatar, everything is all just in one person's mind. and the thing about it all being a dream is, this is a dream too, or how ever a dream works, this is the same, this right here and now stuff. so, i might be disappointing, at first to see that there is no one but you, everything does not exist, but in your imagined form, information, of it. all i mean to say is, everyone can do no other real thing other than to display this, that it will always be imagined in you, i guess that is why i loved it so much, cause it gets to be a cool action movie, but it also lets you in to what you are doing, and how you do it

all movies are the same, this extends to everything else, but i love thinking about it limited to movies. but still, Inception is another man's vision for what is totally going on in Donnie Darko, Waking Life, Southland Tales, Synechdoce New York, Avatar, everything is all just in one person's mind. and the thing about it all being a dream is, this is a dream too, or how ever a dream works, this is the same, this right here and now stuff. so, i might be disappointing, at first to see that there is no one but you, everything does not exist, but in your imagined form, information, of it. all i mean to say is, everyone can do no other real thing other than to display this, that it will always be imagined in you, i guess that is why i loved it so much, cause it gets to be a cool action movie, but it also lets you in to what you are doing, and how you do it