Inception Movie 2010
Movies are often considered dreams projected into life, and Inception is one film that certainly tackles that notion head-on. Christopher Nolan's loopy, brain-splitting science-fiction film, centered around a team of thieves who steal information by breaking into people's subconscious minds, is a movie that often blurs the line between how we see reality and what can be become reality in a dream.
It's an engrossing, sometimes even maddening mind-bender of a film, and one of the director's most formally-challenging films at the early to mid-point of his career. It also announced Nolan's presence in a major way as a top-tier director, proving to audiences what he could accomplish after The Dark Knight and how he could play with form and structure.
It's an impressively layered marvel of a movie, pleasing the eyes and the mind as it plays with how the cinema can twist and turn the logics of reality, all while staying grounded and true to the core foundation of these rooted characters. But in addition to its stellar cast, lead by Leonardo DiCaprio, it is also an astounding technical feat that never sacrifices intelligence or original ideas even while appealing to a broad audience. The film's impressive mix of practical effects and CG are often enhanced by the weighted notions of morality and possibility that are at the core of this logic-hopping movie.
Inception is a wonderment of a film that continued to astound audiences massively impressed with the director's most recent film. Inception is the film that allowed Nolan to be a major commercial selling point — the mere mention of his name became enough validation to make whatever he wish to make. And it was the film that suggested that Nolan's expertise could expand beyond what we initially perceived, becoming a wholly inventive storyteller who'd continue to push and challenge himself with each new film, continuously creating daring, invigorating art with commercial appeal.