Here Comes Inception!
There’s no full length review attached to this week’s Film Pie e-newsletter. I’m holding off until I see the media preview on Wednesday night. The Australian critics have already seen it in Sydney and Melbourne but we’re waiting a little longer up here in Brisbane.
I don’t think I’ve been as excited about a film since Avatar. There’s been a lot of hype (given the reputation of Christopher Nolan) but since most of the early reviews have been sensational, it looks like it’s going to be incredible.
Here’s a sampling of some of the comments on Twitter from a few Sydney / Melbourne critics who have already seen the film –
“INCEPTION is the most awesomely complex & clever film I've watched in a long time. You'll be unpicking it forever...” – Marc Fennell
“I very rarely give a film 5 stars (that's a classic for the ages rating) but after writing my INCEPTION review I'm leaning towards doing so.” – Thomas Caldwell
“Inception: if there's a better blockbuster this year I'll eat my hat in somebody else's dream within a dream within a dream.” – Luke Buckmaster
“INCEPTION was quite incredible. Fear not, I shan't spoil. So glad someone's doing intelligent, original work at a blockbuster level.” – Lee Zachariah
Even the tough to please Jeffrey Wells from the U.S. gave it an endorsement – “It definitely comes together with a second viewing while the things you enjoyed the first time are agreeably underlined and intensified. My ambiguous feelings about Chris Nolan's epic have now been significantly lessened. I am pretty much in the boat now. Faraci was more right than Scott. Inception is dense and challenging, but a masterpiece of its kind.”
And of course, the grand master of film criticism, Roger Ebert summed it up as follows – “The movie is a perplexing labyrinth without a simple through-line, and is sure to inspire truly endless analysis on the web.”
I must close with my friend Sam Dagan in London who posted this on my Facebook wall – “I saw Inception. I guess a B+. I left the cinema thinking it was thought provoking, but I didn't want to think anymore after 2.5+ hours. Perhaps they were trying to plant a seed and then after... F***! I'm still thinking about it.”
The film officially opens on Thursday and you’ll be able to see it (multiple times) from then on.
Welcome To The World Of Rotten Tomatoes
One of my favourite film websites is Rotten Tomatoes. If you’re not familiar, it collates all the reviews of the world’s leading film critics. It posts a single quote from their review and links through to the full text if you want to see it.
Most importantly, it summarises each critic’s opinion as either “fresh” or “rotten”. It then expresses this as a percentage. This tells you what percentage of critics approved of the film.
This can be very useful when looking at the general consensus of a film. You might read a really bad review and then think twice about seeing a certain movie. But what if that critic is in the minority? Maybe it’s not his genre or he was having a bad day when he saw it. Rotten Tomatoes should give you a better answer.
Toy Story 3 stands at a phenomenal 99% approval (from 225 reviews). Inception is at 84% (from 209 reviews) – so I guess there are some who didn’t like it. Conversely, Sex & The City 2 scored just 16% and The Bounty Hunter managed just 8% (these are my 2 worst films of the year so far). Nice to see most other critics agree.
Anyway, it’s taken a while but I’m finally managed to knock down the wall and get accreditation for Rotten Tomatoes. From now on, my reviews can be found through that site. My official page is at http://au.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-13810/.
I don’t have a photo up yet but will hopefully work on that over the next few weeks.
It’s great news for my site as well given the increased traffic through the Rotten Tomatoes link. If I can keep coming up with some snazzy quotes, it might help get a few more people interested in what the Film Pie has to offer.
The main page at Rotten Tomatoes tells you about what’s currently showing in Australia – go to http://au.rottentomatoes.com/ to find all your review info. But I better not plug it too hard since I still want people to visit my own site. J
Well that’s it from me. See you next week for the winners of the 2010 Toomey Awards!