Trailer Tuesday: Inception

I must confess that I knew pretty much nothing about Inception, the new twisty thriller from director Christopher Nolan. Sure I had heard of the film's name and I knew that it featured a fantastic "youthful" cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe. However, due to the amount of secrecy swirling around the project, I just never bothered to pursue information about it further.

The reason for this is that basically I realised I was going to see Inception regardless of what I knew about the film. And I certainly don't want to spoil the movie for myself. Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite directors, having made some of my all-time favourite films of the past decade, including The Prestige, Insomnia and Memento. Ironically, and this puts me in the minority here, but I always thought his biggest box office hits Batman Begins and, to a lesser extent, The Dark Knight were the weakest films in Nolan's cinematic oeuvre.


Anyway, Inception marks Nolan's first ever foray into action sci-fi. Not only has he directed the film but he's written the screenplay as well for this tale of an ambitious corporate type, Cobb (DiCaprio) who becomes embroiled in some kind of dangerous escapade involving world-changing "architecture of the mind" and the control thereof. Judging by the trailer, the film looks like something of a cross between The Matrix, Dark City and Vanilla Sky - targeted at thinking adults.


Inception is set for release in North America on 16 July. Although no release date has been confirmed for South Africa, I would expect the film to open here sometime between mid-July and September, especially when you consider the various international release dates are set for around the same time.

And out of interest, Inception will also be showing at IMAX. This pleases me no end, because The Dark Knight revealed Nolan to be a director who knows exactly how to film for the giant screen format (Michael Bay, please take notes!). Instead of a confusing jumble of over-edited images, Nolan's clean, simple approach to camera work ensures his films wow the audience in much the same way as the many short IMAX documentaries do.