'Inception': Chris Nolan's Brilliant Crackpot of a Movie

July 21, 2010 read full article

An astonishment, an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly.

July 19, 2010 read full article

It's only the latest indication that Christopher Nolan might be the slyest narrative tactician making movies today.

July 16, 2010 read full article

Pretty good, not bad, but brilliant it surely ain't.

July 16, 2010 read full article

Inception is a boldly constructed wonder with plenty of -- as one character describes it -- "paradoxical architecture."

July 16, 2010 read full article

I found myself admiring the movie's stubborn adherence to its own universe and logic.

July 16, 2010 read full article

Nolan, like Cobb, is an assiduous extractor, and he knows how to wow audiences. But scaling big and thinking big are not the same thing. And dark, just because it's dark, isn't more artistic than light.

July 16, 2010 read full article

Like his protagonist, Nolan excels as an implanter of subversive ideas. This time, alas, he didn't dig quite deep enough for them to take root.

July 16, 2010 read full article

Inception is that rare film that can be enjoyed on superficial and progressively deeper levels, a feat that uncannily mimics the mind-bending journey its protagonist takes.

July 16, 2010 read full article

By convoluting the various planes of experience, by overlapping and obscuring ostensible realities and ostensible dreams, Mr. Nolan deprives us the opportunity of investing emotionally in any of it.

July 16, 2010 read full article

t has all of Nolan's strengths, and some of his weaknesses, and it is undeniably his. It is a $160 million action film about loss and regret, and it is exciting in part because of its flaws.

July 15, 2010 read full article

All it asks of viewers is that they do something rare: engage the intellect.

July 15, 2010 read full article

The ambition on display is so huge, and the filmmaking so intelligent, you'll emerge feeling as if you've just watched an entire season of the greatest sci-fi series never made.

July 15, 2010 read full article

This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it'll have you worrying if it's safe to close your eyes at night.

July 15, 2010 read full article

Nolan's film is surely the most ambitious psychological thriller ever, and yet also the most personal. His baroque imagination makes most directors' efforts look like beach-pail sand castles alongside Mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle.

July 15, 2010 read full article

With its James Bond-on-acid action scenes and puzzle-within-a-maze-within-a-puzzle mind games, Inception is certainly the most daring and original blockbuster of the year, as well as a visual tour de force. If it only had a heart.

July 15, 2010 read full article

Inception delivers dazzling special effects and a boatload of stars, but it sags and eventually buckles under the weight of its complicated premise.

July 15, 2010 read full article

Nolan is a thinker, all right, a very busy explorer of mind functions, but capable merely of diagrams when it comes to the heart and soul.

July 15, 2010 read full article

Mr. DiCaprio exercises impressive control in portraying a man on the verge of losing his grip, but Mr. Nolan has not, in the end, given Cobb a rich enough inner life to sustain the performance.

July 15, 2010 read full article

The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update. Take that chance: dream along with Christopher Nolan.

July 15, 2010 read full article