Four great movies to choose from, but which will you pick:
Leo and Scorsese’s psychological mindfuck;
Natalie Portman’s haircut;
Leo and Nolan’s psychological mindfuck;
or Michael Cera’s breakout from typecasting?!
VOTE NOW! Voting closes in one week, and then the winner will be revealed. [size=]Although I think it’s pretty obvious which film will win (Inception).
P.S. I was being sarcastic about Michael Cera; that kid’s a one-trick pony. [/size]
Shutter Island was only number 8 
[size=]Usual Ed-film-taste disclaimer[/size]
Up in the Air at 4 with Shutter Island down at 8 and Kiack-Ass two places lower?!
Um, sorry Empire, but noooooooooooooo!!!
I am a little surprised that Social Network was above Toy Story 3, I loved that film! Shutter Island at 8, what on earth were they thinking, Shutter Island should have been 3 with Toy Story 3 at 2.
Server downtime rather messed with the poll, closing it 2 days before it was due. So if anyone didn’t get a chance to vote in the first place, then you can now as it has been extended until this Sunday or Monday (depending on the forums’ definition of “after”)!
The votes are in, and INCEPTION has been voted the Best Film of Autumn 2010 at WSC.
[size=]Surprise, surprise…![/size]
Does anyone else get the feeling that Owen slightly resents the poplarity of Inception?
I’ve just gotten a bit bored of everyone raving about how clever and original it was, because it really isn’t.
The idea and framework for the film has been done before in several other films - the obvious and popular comparison is The Matrix, but Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine also come to mind. And the concept of inserting dreams is an even older idea as illustrated by Roald Dahl’s The BFG.
I do appreciate that wholly original ideas are an extremely hard thing to produce these days when seemingly everything’s been done before - the few mainstream films that aren’t part of a franchise are mostly marketed as ‘It’s X meets Y’ just so that people have something familiar and comfortable to compare it with. The moviegoing public are as guilty (including yours truly) as the bigwig studio execs for that.
I’m not meaning to defame Chris Nolan by this, because on the whole I respect his work. Indeed, I did enjoy watching Inception, it did have some smart elements and generally decent cinematography. But on the whole, I felt that the movie was so meaninglessly convoluted that it forced people to feel so stupid for not understanding it that in order to save some face they had to rate the film as exceptionally clever. Cleverer than it really was. And that bewitching sorcery is Nolan’s real talent.
To summarise: Leonardo DiCaprio was the Big Friendly Giant.
Can’t say I’d agree with you on most of that. There are some similarities to The Matrix, Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine (you can probably add Paprika to that list too as I think it was part of the inspiration for the film). However, the similarities are a fairly general and don’t go much further than its about dreams. The details of the plot and how it’s structured are quite different. I agree that there are more clever films out there but most of them are far less watchable and if you compare it to other recent big blockbusters like Avatar it easily surpasses them.
Aside from any arguments about how clever it is, at the end of day I voted for it because I enjoyed it the more than anything else we showed last term.
I similarly voted for it on the premise that it was the film i enjoyed most of the term, just ahead of Shutter Island.
I also agree with George that the plot is different - being in dreams is a hugely broad topic and one that I wouldn’t attach to either The Matrix or Eternal Sunshine.
One of the other main issues that I have is that I don’t think the film should ever have been labeled as being ‘cleaver’. Sure, it’s not entirely linear like most blockbusters, but I actually thought the film was a little dumbed down in over-explaining things, which would be my main criticism of it (but only if/when i’m pushed to give one!)