Inception

Since I came out of the cinema, I've been dying to write about it. This film had such an affect on me that I've been thinking about it since the closing credits. I watched Toy Story 3 after this one, and I found Inception crossing my mind over and over again, deducing what happened and what I thought of it. What did I think of it? It's one of my favourite films of all time.

The story is, to put it bluntly, insanely complicated. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an "extractor", which means he goes into people's dreams and steals their secrets. However, he has a scarred past to do with his wife, and because of numerous contracts with many people, he can't go home meaning he's permanently away from his wife and kids. So, he makes a deal with a big business man to do with Inception. Inception, in this film, is where a person manages to plant an idea into some one's dream leading to this someone implementing that idea. Cobb has to do this Inception on another big business man, so he gathers a team to do the job. Though that sounds kind of simple, it really isn't. I can't explain much further as I will give away numerous spoilers, so I won't. You'll have to see it to understand it.

I'll discuss the film as a whole at the end, I'll do the simple stuff now.

The main cast of the film is full of supremely well-known actors, namely the likes of DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy and, that English guy, the one in Batman....oh yeah, Michael Caine. Everyone delivers stellar performances, DiCaprio plays the struggling extractor trying to forget (or is he?) his past superbly, I wish we could've seen more of Ellen Page, not only that she's lovely, but also that her Ariadne (Ar-ee-add-nay) is brilliant, but the winner of this cast is Gordon-Levitt. He's superb as the sort of side-kick to DiCaprio, as he gradually appears to be the rock to Cobb and the behind-the-scenes mastermind behind the entire plan.

It would be utterly impossible not to talk about the effects in this film. As dreams "collapse", i.e. the subject is about to wake up from his dream or he's realised that he's being extracted, the many explosions and crumbling buildings are simply a joy to watch. It seems Christopher Nolan, the genius behind this whole film (he wrote, produced and directed it), took a leaf from the Jerry Bruckheimer notebook, but it was far more classy than any Bruckheimer production. Nolan wanted the whole thing to be as real as possible, meaning even the falling debris actually fell from the ceiling (nevertheless it was soft, but still, not as much CGI as you'd expect from a film of this magnitude). The highlight of the entire film regarding CGI, nay, the highlight of the entire film? When it all goes into zero gravity, which is easily explained and makes perfect sense. Gordon-Levitt is forced to float through corridors, move the dreamers and even have a zero gravity fight. It's insane, I've never seen anything like it before.

Finally, Inception as a whole. In short, it's genius. Nolan has given us such an original film that you have to applaud the man, considering his previous films - The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige - all films that make you think, challenges you into connecting the dots, doesn't let you calm down for one second as if you don't concentrate for, quite literally, 5 seconds, you will be forever lost in understanding the complexity of the film. You have to pay attention for all 147 minutes, never take your eyes off it, listen to every spoken word as it is always relevant to the big picture.

Quite simply, Inception is one of the best films I've seen in a very, very, very long while. Not much this summer will be able to match my excitement for it, it's possible that when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out, I will be more excited, but I don't think I'll see an overall better film in the cinema than this one for many years to come.

9.6/10. Practically perfect.

Toy Story 3

Having seen two films earlier today, Inception and Toy Story 3, Inception is going to need so much more depth and analysis than Toy Story, so I'll do that after this one.

It's been 11 years since Toy Story 2 came out, a film from my childhood, so as you can imagine I was immensely excited to see the next, and final, installment of what Mark Kermode (my favourite film critic) has called "the greatest trilogy of all time." And I have to say, he's absolutely right.

Toy Story 3 begins with a scenario not dissimilar to its predecessor, a fictional high-action scene, this time involving Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Bullseye and Rex leading the charge to fight Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Hamm and the 3 Aliens' dastardly plan. It's a brilliant show of the advancement of technology for Pixar since 1999, and the rest of the film doesn't disappoint. Its story is more emotional than the previous, this time, Andy is 17 and is about to go off to College, meaning he leaves all his favourite toys behind, and all of whom are donated to a day-care centre. Woody escapes to try and find Andy, but then he is forced to go back and help his friends to save the day, like he always does.

We meet many different toys in this one, a personal favourite of mine was Buttercup, a white unicorn with hearts on his cheeks voiced by Jeff Garlin, the man who voiced the captain of the Cruise Ship thing in the brilliant WALL-E. Each toy has such an immense level of detail attached to it that you just have to stop and marvel at how incredible they look. Even with the classic characters, it seems Pixar have gone all out to make them the most beautiful they've ever been, on Woody, you can actually see the stitches and seams of his costume. After seeing Pixar go better than the first Toy Story with the pretty much perfect Toy Story 2, you wouldn't think they could top it, or even match it. But with the third installment, oh, they have.

This film is much more emotional than the last two, as the toys are scared at losing Andy for good, we're scared of losing the characters we all know and love for good. In the climactic scene at the rubbish tip, you can feel every single emotion the people at Pixar had coming through, you can feel it so much that I actually got goosebumps on more than one occasion. The painfully happy yet sad final scene is amazing, I was on the verge of shedding a tear or two, and I was actually begging myself to cry, it seemed that Toy Story and Pixar has done enough over the last 15 years to warrant my years. I was gutted I didn't when I came out of the cinema.

To sum up, Toy Story 3 is an emotional, gripping, incredible animation that proves that Pixar are leagues ahead of any other animation studio today.

9.0/10

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

I reviewed New Moon on here, and I surprisingly liked it. However, I need to revisit that one as sudden revelations have lead me to change my opinions of that film, and even though Eclipse is better than New Moon, you can't help but think this is all getting a bit ridiculous now.

Usually, this second paragraph is one that fills you in on the plot of the film I've recently seen - this film, in all honesty, doesn't have much of a plot to report. Eclipse has the same plot as the other two films, i.e. Bella and Edward falling in love. By this point they have fallen in love, and if you remember from the end of New Moon, Edward asked Bella to marry her. Shock horror. This film is the exact same as New Moon, with the addition of New-Borns, one of the few things I liked in this film. New-Borns are people who have only just turned into Vampires (or the Twilight equivalent of Vampires - shit ones). Eclipse puts forward the idea that New-Borns are Vampires at their strongest, because they have more or less no control over their ability - they're volatile, and will do anything to feed. Not a bad idea from Miss. Meyer there. So, we've discovered that Bella and Edward love each other, and of what I know of Breaking Dawn, they both live happily ever after. Why that takes four books and, annoyingly, five films (bloody Twilight copying Harry Potter by making Breaking Dawn into two films), I have no idea. So, what are the films pros and cons?

I'll start with the pros. To begin with, there really isn't that much fighting, it takes a good hour or so to get any action scenes into it. You get a snippet when the Cullens practice fighting in preparation of battling the New-Borns, which is mildly entertaining. When we finally get to the battle I've been begging for, truthfully, it doesn't disappoint. It's fast and furious, the Cullens (Jasper especially) completely destroying the oncoming New-Borns in tremendous fashion. I found two things annoying in that scene - the occasional cut scenes back to Bella and Edward, I just wanted to see some fighting! And secondly, how the Vampires died. Because of the now infamous way the Vampires in Twilight react to sunlight, these vampires simply smash when they get their head punched off. Which is all very well, but part of me hoped it would be better. Considering the director, David Slade, who's the man behind my favourite horror film of all time 30 Days Of Night, I was expecting maybe a little bit of more epic incidents when it comes to killing Vampires! Sadly though, to keep the 12A, they had to just smash. Slight downfall to a great scene. Sadly though, the fighting scenes are the solitary pro in this, well, mess of a film.

The first con is how they went about telling the story. I think the screenplay writers assumed that everyone going to see this film would know thoroughly what's going on in the story. Err, not quite. Most of the characters were throwing names out all over the place. Whenever we heard Bella, Edward or Jacob, we were okay. Names like Jasper, Alice, Rosalie, Carlisle, Victoria were tolerable, if occasionally confusing trying to differentiate the different Cullens. It's when they throw names like Harry and Billy into the mix is when I get confused. Firstly, who is Harry? And apparently, if I remember rightly, they killed Harry's son at some point too? I have no idea, I was too busy working out who the hell Harry was. Issue number 1. Issue number 2 was the piss poor special effects in the chase-through-the-forest-scene. How that made it past post-production, I have no idea. When you watch it, you'll know what I mean. The Cullens chase Victoria through the forest, surprisingly, and firstly they don't look like they're even running, they're like moving pictures with the occasional expression change to give off the impression that they're actually doing it. Issue 3, however, is the biggest of the lot. In fact, so big, that it deserves its own paragraph.

How terrible Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are at acting, especially the latter.

Somehow, we as an audience are meant to believe that Stewart and Pattinson are meant to be totally in love, and are happy to stay with each other for, literally, ever. Though, from the opening scene containing Bella and Edward, the word "awkward" sums it all up perfectly. The non-sensical, awkward conversations they have, the awkward kissing moment, even the awkward seating position Edward is in (he's basically shoving is crotch into Bella's bum area). What's even worse is that they used to be a couple. Maybe that's a factor in the awkward, but they should know that this is a film millions upon millions will be watching. At least try and give it some oomph. Taylor Lautner, then, suffers from I've-Got-A-Six-Pack-Which-Means-I-Can-Act Syndrome. My arse can he act. He spends nearly the whole film with his shirt off, meaning every female in the cinema will be staring at his stomach rather than concentrating on what he's saying. He also suffers from this awkward theme, by gazing bizarrely at Bella and Edward embracing. His very bland way of showing his feelings for Bella is just embarrassing, and whenever he gets a mildly humourous line, he doesn't have the comic timing to do it properly. For instance, in a tent on a mountain, Jacob and Edward have a sort of man-to-man, heart-to-heart talk, and near the end of the conversation, Edward says something like "You know, if we weren't natural enemies, then I might actually like you." Fair enough, Mr. Edward. What Jacob returns with is the insanely predictable line, "If you weren't dating the woman I love *TOO LONG A PAUSE* nah, I'd still hate you." Err, was I supposed to laugh at that? Why leave a 20 minute pause to deliver the punchline? Instead of undressing Bella with his eyes, he should've paused for half a second, and said the line. Not wait for 10 minutes to catch the next bus, go to town, by a t-shirt, come back and then deliver the punch line! Not amused, Mr. Lautner.

To summarise, this truthfully is a piss poor attempt at a continuation of an immensely (though why, I have no idea) popular franchise. The action is the reason for the score below, but if the action wasn't there, it would've been even lower.

4/10. Cringe worthy is the phrase, I think.

P.S. You know this whole Team Jacob, Team Edward malarkey? Well, watching that, I really have to wonder why there are such teams. Lautner has a bizarre face, he actually looks like the werewolf he turns into, and Edward is just weird looking. He's disproportionately thin if you ask me. Team Alice and Rosalie for the win.

The Collector

Here we go, the first 18 certificate film of my film reviewing career! Except, I'm still 17. So, you'll be happy to know that I actually broke the law to review this film for you. Be proud.

This story is actually quite different to any horror I've seen before. The first scene sets the tone for the film, with a suspicious looking box, man opens it, gets grabbed, screen goes black, the film properly starts. Like many, many other horror films. Arkin, our protagonist, is a construction worker of sorts and he's out along with some bug extermination team to do stuff for an evidently rich family who live in an epic mansion (which seems to shrink when they actually go inside, as inside it just looks like a normal sized house....) and we find out that he and his wife aren't on very good terms, as she has many an issue with Loan Sharks. Arkin needs money to help his wife, so he goes to this big, burly, black guy to help him out. Arkin decides to rob said mansion. Okay, I see where this is going. He goes in, starts unlocking a safe, when he hears some movement in the house - "The family are away for the weekend", he explained with the big, burly, black man. This baffles him, and he soon discovers that there is a murderer in the house! Dun dun dun. Cue lots of extremely tense moments within the house and throw in a fair amount of blood and guts (literally...) for good measure.

That sounds rather sarcastic, giving the impression that I didn't like the film. Whereas I actually quite enjoyed it. I do like a good horror, and this is from the Saw mould admittedly (the guys that wrote this film wrote a couple of the Saw sequels, incidentally), but this is far cleverer than Saw, employing for more scare tactics rather than plain old torture porn. The murderer and our anti-hero come within inches of each other without actually seeing each other thanks to the mansion as it beholds probably about 9 doors for each room. Clever pan shots of the house, where it looks down on two adjacent rooms, Arkin in one, the killer in the other, separated by inches of wall. I found those scenes in particular very well done when it comes to the cinematography point of view.

The acting from Arkin is a stand out, as he is rather excellent I thought, changing from a robber who went in to do one thing and one thing only, dragged into a situation of saving a family from the hellish being that holds them captive. The others are fairly irrelevant as, I'll just tell you the truth, no one in the film lasts very long once in the house, besides Arkin and Hannah, the youngest daughter of the family. One thing that befuddled me was how surprisingly calm Hannah was in this situation. Her Mum and Dad had been caught by this monster of a man, and yet we don't actually see her crying. For a girl around 8 years old, you'd have thought crying would be first on the agenda, but never mind. Oh and lads, there are boobs in this, from the lesbian girl in Heroes, you know, the one that gets with Hayden Panettierre? Yeah, her. Just saying.

All in all, I enjoyed, I don't think the others enjoyed it very much, Ffion for example dreaded walking the 20 feet to her front door in case she got abducted. Like The Strangers, another home-invasion film I utterly adored, this kept be hooked from the get go, but contrasting with The Strangers, this has blood, and lots of it. Bear traps, fish hooks, knives, you name it, it's in this film. The Strangers didn't bother with all that, it went straight for the scariest approach possible - plan and simple terror. This employed a tactic of terror, with some cringe worthy, and on one occasion (I'll let you decide which I'm talking about), genuinely sick-making moments.

I'd give that a 7/10. A good, solid horror flick that's far, far better than the current horror's that grace our cinemas.