Tag Archives: Inception

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At The Theater 2011 #9: Submarine

There’s a lot to be said for a great movie theater. When I’m in Los Angeles, I feel the need to see a movie at the Arclight. And when I travel to Bar Harbor, ME, I need to see a movie at Reel Pizza. I have never made a trip to Bar Harbor without seeing at least one movie at Reel Pizza.

I was looking forward to seeing Horrible Bosses or Midnight in Paris at Reel Pizza when we arrived in Bar Harbor. Unfortunately, I read the schedule wrong and those two movies weren’t showing up until later in the week, so we had our choice of Tree of Life and Submarine.

I didn’t know anything about Submarine before heading into the theater. I’d only seen the poster, which is pretty much just the face and torso of a Welsh teenager. But I did hear things about Tree of Life, mainly that it was long, boring and hard to understand. So Submarine it is!

Submarine is great. I definitely recommend watching it. If you like the humor that comes from awkward situations, like the kind found in Louis C.K.’s show Louis, I think you will enjoy Submarine a lot. Submarine captures the awkwardness of being a teenager, especially an unpopular one, very well.

Ah, young love. Young, awkward love.

If you have quick eyes, you might be able to catch Ben Stiller’s cameo in the movie. It’s faster than Rebecca Romajin’s cameo in X-Men: First Class.

I thought this was Ben Stiller. But it’s not.

My favorite pizza at Reel Pizza is the Hawaii 5-0. We had a larger group with us in Maine this time around, so we ventured out of our usual and added a large Godfather to our order. The Godfather pie is good, but I think the Hawaii 5-0 is still king there.

For more on why you need to see a movie at Reel Pizza, please check out my reviews of Inception and Oceans.

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The Tuesday Night Movies 2011 Oscar Predictions

Need some early help with your 2011 Oscars office pool? Tuesday Night Movies is here to help! All I ask is for a 10% cut.

Best Picture:
Out of the 10 Best Picture nominees, I have seen 9. I would like to see The Kids Are All Right before the Oscars are handed out, but I don’t think seeing it will change my pick here.

Should Win: Toy Story 3
Will Win: True Grit

Actor:
It’s a tough call between Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg and Colin Firth. As great as Jesse Eisenberg was with his quick talking monotone with his potrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, I’m going with…

Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Actress:
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Supporting Actor:
Christian Bale, The Fighter

Supporting Actress:
Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Director:
This was the hardest category for me to choose a winner. I could see any of the nominees taking this one. I’m picking…

Joel & Ethan Cohen, True Grit

Animated Feature:
Toy Story 3

Adapted Screenplay:
The Social Network

Original Screenplay:
Inception

Best Foreign Language Film:
I actually didn’t see any of these. Not surprisingly, Mademoiselle Chambon didn’t make the list of nominees. I’m going to try to watch these between now and Oscar time.

Nominees I Have Not Seen Yet: The Kids Are All Right, The Illusionist, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole, Animal Kingdom, Another Year, Biutiful, Dogtooth, A Better World, Incendies, Outside the Law

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On The Couch #35: Shutter Island

In honor of Halloween, all of October’s On The Couch movies are going be creepy, kooky and all-together spooky. This is going to be hard work for me, as I’ve never really been a fan of horror movies; I’ll take a good comedy over a good horror movie any time, mainly because comedies don’t give me nightmares. But a theme’s a theme, so away we go…

Shutter Island isn’t a horror movie, but it has a lot of the traits of a modern horror movie (creepy children, unsteady camera work) while avoiding the most common pitfall among modern horror movies (bad screenwriting). Shutter Island is written very well, and like The Usual Suspects, benefits from multiple viewings (or in my case, the two featurettes included on the Blu-Ray that serve the same purpose as watching the movie again, but for a quarter of the time required).

If we didn’t finish watching Shutter Island at 1 AM, I would have been very tempted to immediately start it up again from the beginning, and really, what’s a better compliment than that?

Back to creepy children for a minute. Is there any horror movie cliché that still manages to frighten more than a ghost-like child who says something ominous is a high pitched voice? I don’t care how much this horror film trope has been overused, creepy children still freak me out. I saw a very pale kid with blue lips asleep on his mother’s lap on the subway a few weeks ago and I was convinced he was either going to a.) dart straight up and say something ominous right before plunging our subway car into the depths of hell or b.) try to eat the other passengers, zombie-style. Either way, I was scared. Mothers of New York City: leave the horror effects to Hollywood! Feed your kids some fruits and vegetables so that they’ll stop looking like they’re demonically possessed or like flesh-hungry zombies.

Creepy old people with stringy hair are almost as freaky as creepy kids.

Leonardo DiCaprio shows in Shutter Island why he is now my favorite actor. Because of the movies I’ve seen him in this year: Shutter Island, Blood Diamond and Inception, I’m willing to give Leonardo DiCaprio a free pass for his next few movies. I won’t need any marketing other than his name, the title and the release date and I’m there.

Shutter Island has a really slow build. Julie, Bryan and I got together to watch it on Friday and not all of us made it through the whole movie awake. The problem with falling asleep during the slower parts of Shutter Island though is that once Shutter Island pays off, it pays off big and quickly, with a lot happening in a very small amount of time, which makes explaining what happened to your sleepy companion a bit difficult. Thank goodness for the featurette in the special features, which can double as cliff notes for anyone who takes a side trip to Slumber Island.

Slumber Island: Not a creepy kid in sight.
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At The Theater #26: Inception

SPOILER WARNING – I’m going to talk about Inception in detail here, including the ending. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this post until you see it.

Inception is a total mind-fuck. I think this was well expressed by the audience at the theater where I saw it. As soon as the credits rolled, there was a loud wail of anguish from people in the crowd. This wasn’t the same wail of anguish you’d hear at a Last Airbender screening; it wasn’t coming from a poor quality standpoint. The camera just stays on that damn spinning top for so long, then it starts wobbling and…black.  Was Leo awake? Was he still dreaming? To quote a teen in the lobby after the movie: “Christopher Nolan must die!” Again, I think this was coming from a different place than when that was said about M. Night Shamalan from teens after seeing a different movie across town.

 Random Thought #1: The snow-scape dream fortress looked a lot like the sniper board in Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. 

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I really liked Inception. It was like a combination of Lost’s sideways reality, The Matrix and The Sixth Sense. For a very exposition-heavy movie, I think Nolan did a good job of interspersing the exposition so that Inception didn’t feel weighed down by it.

I liked the open-ended ending. At first it looked like that top was going to keep spinning forever and he was still dreaming. But then it starts wobbling and I really hoped it would fall down, because I wanted a happy ending for the guy. But it ended before we could get our answer. Does it even matter? Leo walks away from the top before it stops spinning. It’s as if he said, “this is my real world,” reunited with his kids. If you wake up in heaven, do you question it? Leo risks everything to return to his family, and in the end he’s satisfied that he’s reunited with them to the point that he doesn’t even glance back at the top. But we do. Not that we have a choice, the camera is staring right at, spinning and wobbling away.

 Random Thought #2: Joseph Gordon Levitt in this movie has caused me to want to start wearing vests.

I want to see this movie a second time, largely to watch the wake-up scene on the plane again. I don’t remember what the order was of people waking up. Maybe that gives us some clue as to whether or not Leo was actually awake in the end. Was he the last one to wake up? If he wasn’t, I think would lean heavily towards him being still asleep. Everyone else should have made it out of the dream before him, right?
Inception reminded me a lot of The Matrix, to the point that I’m really hoping they don’t mess up any sequels the way that the ball was completely dropped with the two Matrix sequels. Then again, I have faith in Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight was my favorite movie of 2008, so I know the guy can do sequels well. But really, I can’t even see where you’d go with this movie in a second one. It works so well on its own. We don’t need Inception 2: The Search for Leo.

Tuesday Night Movies is on a road trip! We saw Inception at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor, Maine. I love this movie theater. This might be my favorite movie theater. It’s this or LA’s Arclight.

What makes Reel Pizza so great? Basically, it’s the concession stand. While other theaters have branched out from popcorn and candy to include nachos and pretzel bites, you can order pizzas at Reel Pizza. The topping list is extensive. Don’t feel like pepperoni tonight? Why not go for mussels, artichoke hearts or goat cheese? Need something to wash it down with? How about a beer? That’s right, beer. And it’s good beer too. They offer Guinness and selections from local breweries, all for cheaper than what a Bud Light would run you in NYC.

The two theaters were designed with the concession stand in mind. Each row of seats has a counter in front of it to put your pizza tray and beer. The first three rows of taken up by couches and easy chairs. These seats are usually the first to go. TV trays are available for viewers lucky enough to snag these seats. When your pizza is ready, a BINGO board on the side wall silently announces your number to let you know that your pizza is waiting for you in the lobby. They even throw an intermission into each movie so that you can grab another beer, or if you’re hungry, another pizza.

 The Reel Pizza bingo board of pizza readiness.

I haven’t been to Bar Harbor without going to Reel Pizza. If you’re there, it’s a must-stop-at destination.