After being disappointed with Iron Man 2, I thought the 'Summer Blockbusters' were going to be over for a while for me (The Last Airbender, The A-Team and Toy Story 3 haven't been released in my country yet...)
Even though I'm not the biggest Batman fan around, I truly enjoyed Nolan's The Prestige for it's originality and a good break from the traditional stories.
I went to watch Inception 24hrs ago.
It started off at a relatively fast pace and got me thinking immediately. Like Iron Man 2, this was one of those very few films in which I didn't talk or pass a few jokes around. They managed to drain me into the story and kept me locked in till the very end.
I'll start by discussing the basic plot line. As sci-fi as it is, I found the motivation behind the main characters to be completely believable. If we had that technology it would certainly be used to affect a competitors business. I liked the way that each character has his own back story which affected what happened in the dream worlds. Note: I don't think I ever had a dream within a dream so I found that bit a little too sci-fiy for the amount of 'realism' (if you may) but it helped the story construct itself into the different layers. Also, it gave Nolan the excuse to change the palette by shifting from a rainy city to a hotel to somewhere in the Alps I assume.
As for the actors, this is the first 'De Caprio' movie I didn't hate - on the contrary, I think he developed the role perfectly. I didn't like Titanic mainly because of him, The Aviator bothered me quite a bit too. It might have been the colour palette but his acting didn't strike me. The same goes for Ellen Page, she was ok-ish in X-Men 3 personally, possibly because she didn't have a big role but she did a pretty fine job in this.
What I didn't like about her however, mainly her character, was that she didn't seem to hesitate to help out Cobb in something 'which isn't exactly legal.' Maybe they lived in a near future in which entering one's dreams was not that much of a big deal?
Next, CGI. Now this is where I love Nolan's approach to visual effects. I don't find them to be as epic as the LOTR scenes, but he managed to make my jaw drop especially in the 'training' sequences. The folding building were spectacular and original, even the part in which Ariadne closed a section up with enormous mirrors. Not to mention the 0-gravity scene. I was quite a hardcore Matrix fan a few years ago but this to me makes the Matrix trilogy almost look ridiculous (it's still got it's epicness [mainly the siege] but story-wise...)
I think all the actors were solid. I'm pleased that Bale wasn't in this, I liked him in the Prestige (much more than I like him as batman) but I don't think there was a role which would have suited him as well as it suited the other actors. Levitt was quite funny at times and he seems like a decent actor, I wouldn't mind seeing him in Batman 3 (I'll leave this topic for when I'll make my Batman 1 + 2 review but I find that the nice thing about the Batman films are the villains and civilians rather than Batman himself). Marion Cotillard (Mal - the psychotic wife :P) did an extremely good job. I like the way she sometimes popped up when I least expected her to and screw everything up. This was probably why I felt the movie was experimental (and succeeded) - it wasn't over optimistic or pessimistic. It kept the element of surprise without overdoing it - kudos to Nolan.
The music too was very well done. There wasn't a moment in which the music took over what was happening (something like the traditional 'montage') It was subtle enough to simply keep the story moving, without overdoing or under-performing. The sound effects too were spectacular, I saw a short clip about how they merged actual explosion sounds with whale sounds (it sound a bit weird but damn it worked perfectly)
To conclude, I must say this is by far the best movie i've seen this year and i'm currently ranking it as my 2nd favourite film of all time (the first being LOTR, followed by Iron Man and Watchmen and 3rd and 4th place respectively). I'll definitely go and watch it again sometime soon and get my hands on the DVD/bluray once it's out.
I'm giving this an extremely solid 9.5 / 10!