In which, against type, I almost hate it.

Part of my qualified dislike for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (I liked a lot of the visuals and editing) stems from my mounting dislike of Michael Cera. Somewhere near the middle of Scott Pilgrim, that dislike graduated to full-on hatin’. His character is boring and empty and undeveloped. The comic character sounds deeper, or at least more well-drawn (*self-high-five for that pun*), but in the movie, I get little to no sense of who he is.

Also, I’ve got nothing to back it up, but if you’ve ever heard Simon Pegg’s real voice, it’s much deeper than the one he uses in his Edgar Wright projects. It feels like Cera decided or was instructed to similarly raise his voice in the Wright-directed Scott Pilgrim, because his voice is as high as a kitten doing a Bubbles from Powerpuff Girls impression. It is a strangleable voice.

If you’re not a hater, I could see bumping the movie to a C+ or even a B-. But the main character, his relationship, and the fights around them are a hollow void. I cannot see myself watching Scott Pilgrim again.

Full review here.

The Other Guys is like Adam McKay’s fourth good comedy. With this, Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers, that makes him responsible for the bulk of the great non-Apatow comedies of the last 5-6 years. He’ll be commanding my respect until I, in proper fickle critic form, turn on him just as he becomes most commercially successful.

As for the movie itself, I appreciated all the subversion going on. Samuel L. Jackson and the Rock’s deaths were especially hilarious. There were plenty of jokes I didn’t laugh at, but it wasn’t because they were bad jokes; they just weren’t the kind I’m particularly struck by. An awful lot of it was funny as hell, and if you spend any time thinking about it you’ll see hell is pretty dang funny.

Overall, I’d put The Other Guys a notch below Anchorman and ahead of McKay’s other work. If you liked any or all of those, I’d check it out.

Part one–where I discuss how I don’t think the end of Inception is a dream, but that Christopher Nolan doesn’t want us to be certain–is here.

Cards on the table: I’m of the camp that endings where “it was all just a dream!” are so stupid they should be stuffed in a sack and then chucked in the river, and then you need to watch over the river with a .308 in hand just in case they bob back to the surface and start wriggling around. This isn’t exactly a small camp. I’m sure that, even if Nolan isn’t a card-carrying member, he’s at least heard of this camp, and is familiar with its platform, i.e. that dream endings should be suffocated, drowned, and, if necessary, shot.

So I don’t think he’d be satisfied with your standard dream ending. Alongside all the evidence that suggests we’re in reality, but oh wait maybe we aren’t because Leo just appears at home just like how you instantly arrive somewhere in a dream, and hey, don’t his kids’ clothes look awfully similar?, the main proof Nolan hasn’t constructed a clear dream ending is the internet is still arguing about it left and right.

Obviously, it’s not clear. To paraphrase Marsellus Wallace, it’s pretty fucking far from clear.

Frankly, Christopher Nolan’s too good of a director and a storyteller to unintentionally leave his ending ambiguous. If he wanted to be sure one way or the other, we would be damn sure by the time Inception cut to black. Theorize about how it was all Saito’s conspiracy or Mal was right all along until you’re blue in the face because people are so tired of your ridiculous rants that they bruise your face with a mighty two-fisted blow, but there’s no serious evidence to prove anything beyond the following:

a) it’s real, or

b) DiCaprio never escaped limbo, or was only kicked up to one of the higher dream-levels, and would rather reunite with his children, even if they’re figments of his imagination, than risk discovering he’s back in crummy old reality

In other words, sometimes our desires and fantasies are more powerful–and more meaningful–than the objective facts. Based on the conclusion of the final scene, Christopher Nolan doesn’t want us to be able to leave with 100% certainty that DiCaprio’s made the right choice and will now live happily ever after with his flesh-and-blood kids.

I’m tempted to argue that if he’s happy, that’s all that matters, but you have to consider that if he’s still in a dream, his real-life kids are still stuck without their daddy. Ethically, then, that he doesn’t do all he can to ensure he’s not in a dream (like spent five seconds more watching his stupid top!) is a selfish, immoral decision.

But he’s wanted to come back to them so long, he’s lost his ability to know what’s real and what isn’t. DiCaprio got lost in his fantasy a long, long time ago. Now, he’s willing to do anything, including deprive his children of ever seeing him again, to get it.

That’s a pretty goddamn dark ending right there. I think it’s reality, and he and his kids can now be happy together. But the fact DiCaprio doesn’t even check the top means he doesn’t truly care. He just wants the feeling that he’s back with his kids, no matter the consequences. Does this make him a bad person? I don’t think so. But he is a deeply compromised one.

Here you go.

Dinner for Schmucks is my least favorite type of movie to review: the ones I don’t think are anything special but aren’t crummy enough to muster any strong anti-emotions either. These are B- movies, as well as the C+s of the “eh” variety (rather than the “holy cow, this wasn’t good, but parts of it were awfully fun to watch” type).

I will say, however, that I found the mice dioramas endlessly hilarious, the dinner shenanigans were great, and I see some promise from the writers, who pulled a lot of nice detail-oriented gags out of even their smallest characters. I’m interested in whatever they do next.

That, by the way, is one of the cooler parts of this job: since you see all kinds of junk you normally wouldn’t bother with even on video, you get a pretty broad look at who’s doing what in Hollywood right now. The names of many writers and directors don’t mean anything to most people, but sometimes I’ll see an obscure name and think “Oh yeah, no wonder this played like it was directed by a corpse. A corpse with poor artistic sensibility.” Or, alternately, “Ah, that’s why I liked this more than most critics, the guy who wrote The Departed did the script, dur.”

Not like I’ll remember the authors of Dinner for Schmucks three days from now. But when I watch their next project, check out their names, and see the credit for this one, I’ll have a slightly different perspective than if I’d never seen their intermittently funny but fairly generic comedy.

Available here.

Sometimes the difference between a C+ and a C- is whether I left the theater cheered by a movie’s foolishness or annoyed by it. Salt got crazy enough to put a smile on my face. That, along with Angelina Jolie’s vengeful gynoid demeanor, made me happy.

But no, it wasn’t very good.

So, yes, spoilers will follow.

As a movie about dreams where the dreamer frequently doesn’t know he’s asleep, Inception naturally lends itself to paranoia. That Christopher Nolan’s final shot says “Hey, maybe this isn’t what you think it is” demands that we reexamine the whole thing until internet forums everywhere are awash with theories about what’s going on that range from the reasonable to the “spinning the cat over the head by its tail” insane.

There are, as far as I’m aware, four major theories about the ending:

1) DiCaprio isn’t dreaming, he’s back in reality, and he’s finally reunited with his kids.

2) DiCaprio never escaped the nested dreamworlds; the rest of the movie’s to be taken at face value, but the reunion is a dream.

3) Mal was right, DiCaprio’s been stuck in a dream the whole time, none of this is reality.

4) The whole movie’s a dream and WHARGHLBLARGGLLL pet theory with no real supporting evidence whatsoever.

Just going with my gut, I think 1) is correct. It’s the most satisfying narrative conclusion. 2) is also an all right way to end Inception, but unless Nolan is doing something much crazier and less interesting than normal, 3) or 4) are just off the wall. I believe he deliberately plants seeds to mislead us that way, but that’s part of the point; for these characters, it’s very, very hard to know what’s real and what’s a dream, and Nolan wants his audience to feel the same way.

Speaking of–the final shot of the spinning top.

Here’s my take: it’s spinning, spinning, spinning–OH SHIT THIS IS A DREAM! OH NO! OH–wait, it’s wobbling! This is real! Yay, he’s back with his–

Cut to black before it falls down.

The top wobbles. We are back in reality. But it took a long, long time to do so, and it cut away before it conclusively fell. We’re supposed to feel that this is real, probably.. but, like DiCaprio, we can’t ever be sure.

I’ve read a lot of arguments that his kids are the same age, wearing the same clothes, doing the same things as from his memories, etc., meaning it is a dream after all. But we don’t know they’re the same age–we don’t see their faces until the very end, and the credits list two sets of kids, the second of which is about 18 months older. I’ve read that the clothes are actually different–very similar, which I’m sure was no accident on Nolan’s part, but different. DiCaprio is not walking back into the exact moment that’s haunted him this whole time, the moment he left his children and went on the run.

One more piece of evidence: he’s not wearing a wedding ring in that last scene. In all his dreams, he wears his ring. In reality, it’s gone.

I’ve still only seen it once, and I can’t say with absolute certainty this is the correct take. But, again, I think that’s how Nolan wants us to feel about Inception. The evidence fits that it’s real, but he’s planted just enough false leads to keep us unsure.

UPDATE: So according to the man in charge of costumes, DiCaprio’s kids were wearing different clothes at the end of the movie. What does this mean? Well, it weakens any arguments for theories that he is conclusively still within a dream. But it doesn’t destroy them. It makes a lot of sense, to me, that DiCaprio’s subconscious would alter his kids’ appearance to allow himself to continue believing he’s been reunited with them. The mind protects itself.

But the gymnastics needed to execute these arguments just got a little tougher. At the same time, there’s still no way to prove he’s back in the 100%, no-doubt-real world. Inception remains crafted to deny comprehensive proof for either conclusion. That the kids’ clothes change does nothing but cement that ambiguity as the only real answer.