Matt Damon Movie: *** Inception (2010)

 This movie is very hard to understand.  Cobb (Matt Damon) is someone who helps draw information from people's subconscious as a form of industrial espionage.  However this time he is employed by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to put an idea into somebody's mind, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy).  This movie has lots of excitement an action but I have difficulty understanding what is going on as they are in dreams inside dreams inside dreams.  It is really difficult.  Cobb recruits Ariadne (Ellen Page/ Elliot Page) as a designer.  In the movie we discover that Cobb's wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard) committed suicide because after a dream state she no longer believed the world was real.  At one point we get a dream in the snow on a mountain.  It just doesn't make sense at times.  Why did they need so many layers of dreams?  It is the new lady that is in onto Cobb and his instability mentally after his wife died.  he often sees her in his dreams and she is always violent.  Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Eames (Tom Hardy) help Cobb in his endeavors.

This movie had great success and received four Oscars.  I think people like not being able to understand as long as there is lots of gun shooting and explosions.  

Movie Review: Batman Begins

This is a very good new beginning to Batman, with a lot of pre Batman explanation. like how he learned his fighting skills.  He actually trains with a group that is against crime, to the point of taking it into their own hands.  Bruce Wayne has a falling out with them, and returns to Gotham with a new goal and sets himself up as Batman.   But the past haunts him. 

Ducard is the person from the past who helped train Bruce Wayne.  Alfred is the butler and Lucius Fox is Bruce Wayne's inside man at Wayne Enterprises.  Rachel Dawes is a district attorney and Bruce Wayne's friend from growing up years.  Jim Gordon is a police officer and becomes Batman's liaison.  And Dr. Jonathan Crane is with the gangs and also working for Ducard and his group.  He is the mask man who uses a toxin to make people hallucinate and thereby he gets them off on insanity pleas.  

The gangs have been smuggling the toxin in for sometime, and putting it in the water supply.  They have stolen a water vaporizer and plan to vaporize the toxin in the air and release the poison toxin into the air.  This will create paranoid people killing each other and Gotham will destroy itself.  Only Batman, and Gordon can turn the tide.  

Batman vs Ducard makes very good conflict.  A cute side bar is the president at Wayne enterprises and Lucius Fox.  When Fox becomes the president he asks the former president, "Didn't you get the memo?"

• 

  Christian Bale

  Bruce Wayne

  /Batman
• 

  Michael Caine

  Alfred
• 

  Liam Neeson

  Ducard
• 

  Katie Holmes

  Rachel Dawes
• 

  Gary Oldman

  Jim Gordon
• 

  Cillian Murphy

  Dr. Jonathan Crane
• 

  Morgan Freeman Lucius Fox  

  
  

Movie Review: **** In Time (2011)

 Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is on a mission to undo a lopsided society.  In this society everyone is given 25 years, after which you no longer age.  However then you have to get your own time, and if your time gets to zero, you die.  In this way those with time can keep the world from becoming overpopulated.  When Salas' mother (Olivia Wilde) dies because Salas culd not get her more time before she died, he sets out on this vendetta.  Someone who wants to die gives him 100 years, and this gets him into a richer high society neighborhood.  There he meets Sylvia Weiss (Amanda Seyfried) whose father (Vincent Kartheiser) has benefitted by the system--living at age 25, forever.  His wife, mother and child all appear the same and are all 25 in terms of aging.  He first Salas kidnaps her, sort of but she wants to go with him, and they begin to change the system, by stealing years from banks.  The Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) tells Sylvia's father she doesn't appear to want to be rescued.  Salas and Sylvia make a pretty good team.  There is always a bigger bank.

This universe has some very intriguing points and nuances which makes a good movie.

Movie Review: ****Quiet Place II (2020)

 Emily Blunt again stars as the mother of a post apocalyptic family.  But her daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and a friend, Emmett (Cillian Murphy) are the two trying to find rescue on an island.  The alien creatures with big ears cannot swim.  Consequently the island has become a refuge.  Someone is playing a song over and over so as to be a beacon for those who will hear and discover the key.  The creatures are intent on eating everyone however.  Regan wants to get to the island so as to broadcast the feedback in her hearing aid; which has been disagreeable to the creatures and makes them vulnerable to being killed.  It overwhelms their supersensitive hearing.  This presents two stories which are parallel.  Regan and Emmett on the island and mother and Marcus (son/brother) (Noah Jupe) who is injured and consequently he and mother are fighting their own battle against a creature.  They also have a newborn baby.

This movie takes place after the original, and it shows the effect living in this environment has had on people.  They are not helpful to each other, and because of fear or greed some are not good to others.  

The movie starts at Day One of the invasion.  This allows the father (John Krasinski) to be part.  However this is a bit confusing because it shows the first day scene, and then skips to present day during the opening credits.

Available on Paramount +

A Quiet Place

Movie Review: ***^ Inception (2010)

Inception, This is a con artist movie, except con artists of a different nature.  These con artists steals ideas and information via dreams.  However, in this case, the con is of a different nature.  The con is to place an idea in another person’s brain, but to have the idea be the other person’s. 

Sounds complicated, and to be honest this movie is very confusing.  You have two dreamers, one creating the world, and the other doing the con inside that environment.  The con is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the one who creates the worlds is Ariadne (Ellen Page).  The con is made more difficult because of history, Cobb lost his wife (Marion Cotillard) deep inside a dream, and she still haunts his dreams.  Other members of the con team are Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Saito (Ken Watanabe) who has hired Cobb to pull off the con, Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Browning (Tom Berenger).  The mark is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). 

Talking about dreams can leave anyone confused, and in this case you are talking about dreams inside of dreams, inside of dreams and so on.  It can be come confusing.  In each level, things go faster.  As a result, in each deeper level there is more time to react to what is happening in the lower levels.  This is important, because “kicks” need to be timed to take place in all the worlds at the same time so you can wake up. 

This work is harder, because people programs defenses into their subconscious—which come out in the form of people defending and shooting.  Of course if you kill them, they don’t really die, but it is all confusing in the end with lots of action.