Inception

It takes a special kind of talent to consistently construct genuinely complex narratives that manage to retain coherence. Chris Nolan's a past master. His films assume the audience is intelligent (or at least can pay attention) and are never tricksy for the sake of being tricksy. Everything is integral to the plot, whether it be the reverse construction or Memento or the sleight of hand of The Prestige. This is equally true of Inception, where the viewer plunges through multiple dream levels and is never (totally) lost. It also means we never get ahead of the plot either. We might think we know where the story's going but we don't, not entirely. It's definitely a film that requires multiple viewings and I'm sure that when I get round to a second (or third) one I'll change my mind about stuff (the ending for sure as I'm totally undecided about how to interpret it) I think on a first viewing the sheer spectacle and momentum obscure some important piece of information (I wish I'd paid more attention to the matter of totems), and some of the dialogue gets swamped. Yet it somehow manages to make sense.
Considering how long the film is, the time actually flies by, especially once the inception plot itself gets under way. The concept is easy to grasp (plant the seed of an idea deep in the subconscious) which makes the multiplicity of dream levels equally easy to accept. That in turns generates the lovely idea that incidents in one dream impact in unexpected ways on what's happening on the other levels. Because of this, and the differentiation between the dreams, the film can crosscut between the multiple strands without losing clarity. As an extra treat, the deepest dream level unexpectedly turns out to be James Bond-like, complete with Arctic HQ and a bloody great safe. Even for sci-fi, it's delightfully out of place (but then, that's dreams for you)
Amid all the action - and there's a lot - there's also space for some top-notch performances. Leo is of course anguished but the real star turns are Cillian Murphy's Fischer, a man trying to live up to the expectations of others (and who, lest we forget, is actually the *victim* in all of this), and Tom Hardy's Eames, who has a nice sideline in winding up Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur. Cobb's dead wife meanwhile is a worringly malign presence within the dreams, something which he can't control and which he fails to mention to his colleagues, with disastrous repurcussions. It's only in retrospect that the essential amorality of the entire enterprise hits home. This isn't a band of good guys, but nor are they villains, exactly. What they do is morally dubious yet we don't think about that while watching. What we focus on are the astonishing visuals: a Parisian street folding itself over; buildings crashing down into the ocean; Arthur's encounter with zero gravity. But for a change, this is a blockbuster that is about more than just the surface. There's much to ponder and re-watch and re-assess.