INCEPTION

Rated PG-13

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page
WRITTEN BY: Christopher Nolan


CRITICAL SCORE: 9 / 10

BULLET POINTS: 9 / 10

PLOT

In the world of high stakes corporate espionage, Dom Cobb is a thief hired to extract vital information from the subconscious of his targets by hijacking their dreams.  He is given a last chance to clear his name and get his life back if he can accomplish the near impossible task of inception; planting an idea in his target's mind.

TRAILER TRASH

Christopher Nolan has directed some of my favorite films starring my favorite actors (MEMENTO with Guy Pearce, THE DARK KNIGHT with Heath Ledger) and is fast becoming a director that I would put into the prestigious category of "Untouchable".  It was no surprise to me that the trailer for INCEPTION damn near gave me chills, pandering to some of my favorite subjects, actors and genres.  I've always been a huge fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and have, as of late, been more and more impressed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Cillian Murphy.  INCEPTION was easily the movie I pined for and anticipated the most this summer, looking to be the rare combination of an intelligent, thought-provoking, mindfuck entertainment slap in the mouth summer 2010 has needed.  That said, I am largely disappointed when having any high expectation at all before seeing a flick, so I sat down, albeit a bit giddy, more than a tad cynical as well.  Let's face it, this summer has been pretty sucktacular as far as quality of film is concerned.  I honestly sat down hoping for the best and expecting the worst.  Let's see how Nolan's pet project stacks up.

PREDATORS

Rated R

DIRECTOR: Nimrod Antal
STARRING: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga
WRITTEN BY: Alex Litvak, Michael Finch
  

CRITICAL SCORE:  6 / 10

BULLET POINTS:  7 / 10 

PLOT

A goulash of bad asses are dropped (literally) on a game preserve planet and hunted down for sport by an alien race of predators.

TRAILER TRASH

John McTiernan's 1987 slice of kickass known as PREDATOR is one of my absolute favorite flicks ever put to celluloid and holds the special honor of being the movie I paid to watch at the theater more times than any other film.  That is a tough act to follow for any sequel, but I find PREDATOR 2 to be quite underrated and a pretty damned solid entry into the Predator Franchise.  Yes, AVP was pretty awful and although AVP: REQUIEM stepped it's game up a couple of notches on the entertainment scale, both flicks are severely lacking and didn't deliver the goods for most fans.  As a Predator geek, I think most of us were happy just to have another Predator film delivered to our mandibles for consumption, much less one produced by genre fave, Robert Rodriguez.  However, after the buzz of pre-release euphoria wore off, it was time to sit down in that dark cold theater with my Reeses Pieces in hand and finally see whether or not PREDATORS actually delivered on it's hype and on it's own as a film.  As Jesse Ventura's character Blain might say, "Let's lock and load you slack-jawed faggots because it's time to let ol' painless out of the bag!"