Sunday, July 18, 2010

About Time

This summer has finally presented some worthwhile entertainment, and man is it worthwhile. Only a few weeks ago I was complaining about how awful this years films have been thus far, then suddenly it’s all changed. Only few weeks ago I finally saw a film in theatres that genuinely entertained me, Toy Story 3 is the first film I’ve seen this year that would even get an A- (sorry Shutter Island but after repeated viewings a B+ is all you get). Now this isn’t saying I just hated all the films but more I’ve been seriously slacking, and the raised ticket prices are giving me even more excuses to skip out on films like Greenberg, The Ghost Writer and How to Train Your Dragon, all of which I attempt to catch up on by the end of the month. It’s also quite difficult to get friends to put up the money to join me in the theatre, and only certain films can get them excited enough to tag along, sadly films like The Kids are All Right and Winters Bone are not high on their must see list. Luckily this weekend I was able to finally find a film that both my friends and I would be happy to pay the $17 admission to see (not literally, my friends got me a free ticket since my birthday’s coming up). This film was Inception, and boy was it worth it. I don’t really have anything new to say that a hundred other people haven’t told you, but I can tell you something, it was a definite A+ film for me, and one I can see me rewatching soon and owning when it’s DVD becomes available. It is already my favorite movie of this year, and of the few years before that. If it came out last year it would definitely find a spot on my best of the decade list. Now there isn’t much new I can say but I’m still going to get to some points why I liked the movie so much.

It’s not confusing, it’s complex: It’s not that confusing, though that seems to be the main complaint that several critics have. Sure the first 15 minutes or so will have you confused, but if you have enough patience you’ll be able to understand what’s going on soon enough. If you go into the movie and just try and follow along you’ll be able to understand the plot, honestly it’s really not that hard.

Some characters don’t really have much depth to them, but I don’t really think it’s that necessary. Sure some of Dom’s crew don’t really have much depth to them, but they don’t necessarily require it. The emotional story is more about Dom and His wife as well as with Fischer and his father. All the characters are well acted and are three dimensional enough, an why must they all have their own troubles? How much more depth do people need? If we went in depth on all of these characters and explored their issues, this movie would be at least an hour longer, and trust me at two and half hours it’s long enough.

To me the movie was nearly perfect. The action sequences were amazing, the special effects were outstanding but did not dominate the film, the acting was great all around, and the film was just exceptional. Hopefully this movie season is about to turn around, and we can have some more Toy Story’s and Inception’s instead of Twilight’s and Airbender’s.