Inception

It's a good while since we'd been to the movies, but we decided to go last Sunday, as the forecast wasn't great. The day turned out better than expected, but we had our tickets booked, so we headed down to Movies @ Dundrum.

Inception is a movie for boys - with many scenes inspired by The Matrix (low-gravity fight scene), The Bourne trilogy (aerial views of exotic cities, and mad pursuits in African alleyways) and James Bond movies (bunker on top of a snow-covered mountain, lots of baddies on skis and snowmobiles).

But there is a lot more to it than just action scenes. There was plenty to keep the mind active (with lines like "whose subconscious are we in?", you know you're going to have to pay attention if you want to figure out what's going on) and there is a human angle at the heart of the story. They don't call it "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind" for nothing!

And excellent actors too - Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy and Ellen Page played the main characters.

The sets are wonderful - the scene of Paris blocks folding over each other alone was enough to get me hooked. And it's not all CGI apparently - they've filmed as much as possible "for real", before adding some CGI. According to the very interesting production notes, "one of the most complicated sets was a long hotel corridor that was able to rotate a full 360 degrees to create the effect of zero gravity".

A good movie - and, thankfully, not in 3D. I'll look forward to the DVD.