Sunday, July 18, 2010

Oh, how I love a good psychological thriller

Well, this week I finally got around to seeing a couple of movies. I saw Despicable Me, which I know I said I wouldn't see. But the more previews I saw, the more I wanted to go see it. Not to mention, it has good word-of-mouth right now. I am a sucker for kid's movies, I'll admit to that. A good chunk of my DVD collection are Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks Animation movies, not to mention all the Harry Potter movies. It was a really cute movie. The minions were adorable, and it showed that even the most dastardly person can have a heart of gold. I can appreciate that because apparently I am a dastardly person (she typed jokingly).

Anyways, I adored Inception. I think Christopher Nolan is increasingly becoming one of my favorite directors. Memento I think is being overlooked now that he has a couple of splashy, big-budget movies (the Batman reboot and Inception). For those of you who have only ever seen those 3 movies by him, you are doing yourself a disservice. It is a giant mind-fuck, which I love. You'd need to watch it at least twice to be able to fully wrap your head around it. Same with Insomnia, another great Nolan flick. Inception definitely follows this tradition of multiple viewings. Honestly, if you didn't get the ending you weren't even paying attention. I love that Leo's wife's name was Mal (Latin for evil). There was also character named Eames. The Eames' were a husband-wife team of architects and furniture designers. Ellen Page's character's name was Ariadne, who was the woman who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur in Greek myth. Once you see the movie, you can see why I got a little bit of joy out the character names. It definitely fits the characters. For those that don't know the basic plot, Leo and his team are hired to plant an idea in someone's mind, whereas they are typically hired to extract information from in their dreams. The premise is sound enough. Theoretically speaking, it is easier to obtain information from the subconscious mind than the conscious one. That's why a trained, professional hypnotist can be potent. And I'm not talking about the gimmicky ones at conferences. And Leo's character described what the result of inception quite eloquently that an idea implanted in the subconscious can spread like a virus once it's there, which is a pretty accurate statement. I also loved the idea of totems, which are objects they used to tell if they were in the dream world or the real world.

All in all, I'd recommend both flicks. I think a user review on Yahoo was pretty spot on when it that while it isn't a truly excellent film, it's great in that it isn't a regular summer popcorn movie and it requires you to think and use your brain.

I think that's why I've enjoyed his Batman reboot so much. They are exploring the human aspect of the superhero and supervillain and their psyches and their motivations. It's not "I'm good, you're bad. Let's fight." I've read recently that Nolan has been approached to do with the Superman universe what he's done with the Batman universe. I'm not 100% on board with this yet considering Superman actually has the superpowers that Batman lacks. But I have a feeling he will explore lonliness and abandonment. We will see. I'm sure he'll do something great with it.

Next time, I'll be back on topic. I've been working on Bible translations. And let me tell you, it's been hard finding old English bibles.

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