Inception

[Donkey Lips]

More spoiler conversation:


He wasn't in reality because he jumped from level three to awake... he never got out of the van. As far as his/his wife's totem, he never stayed with it to make that determination. His limbo was appealing to him because he didn't have to worry about the manifestation of his wife anymore.

Interesting. I figured that by finding each other in Limbo, Saito and Cobb were able to realize that nature of where they were - and therefor use the gun to shoot each other, to bypass the kick to each level completely. If you killed yourself in Levels 2, 3 or 4 under sedation, you would drop to 5 (Limbo). Since there's no where to go in Limbo after being killed, and they were both aware of their own perceived realms, they were able to exit the dream from Limbo to awake.

Or maybe they both just shot each other and went brain dead.

[CUDDLEMONSTER]

When people say their minds have been blown, is that because you just didn't get it?

I thought it was a good action movie with some interesting concepts but this movie far from blew my mind.

you're just smarter than everyone else (is that what you wanted to hear?)

anyway- i subscribe to the theory that the entire movie was all a dream, either cobb's (and you never see his waking self) or christopher nolan's, but for the first time i can remember the "it was all a dream" device didn't come off as contrived or as a cop out. if anything it showed that what happens in the mind or in representations of the real world (like movies) are just as important as the "real" thing.

also- was anyone else blown away by the soundtrack?

[able]

also- was anyone else blown away by the soundtrack?

Yeah I really was! During the scenes on the snowy mountain
the movie "theme music" came on but it had these sour sounding notes playing with it.
I remember thinking "I am going to sample this when I find it!!"

@4:23

[Smell Good]

You hear that? That's the sound of me rolling my eyes as Inception becomes a "cult" movie. Now everyone and their mother will have some theory about it.


That being said...


I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Just got back from the IMAX a few minutes ago. Worth the ticket price. I've got a mad crush on Ellen Page and a slightly discomforting yet undeniable, purely heterosexual crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

 

[able]

You hear that? That's the sound of me rolling my eyes as Inception becomes a "cult" movie. Now everyone and their mother will have some theory about it.

You're talking to a guy who once sampled the theme music to Spongebob Squarepants for a beat.
I don't "hear" things just cause there's hype. I just hear stuff.

[Smell Good]

Interesting discussion with the actor who played The Chemist -

SPOILER

What if Leo is the one being "incepted" with an idea? We keep hearing the phrase "Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret?" and it's like someone — maybe Ellen Page's character because she's the catalyst of his emotional catharsis — has set this all up so he can let go of his regret over Mal's death. That's why at the end with Saito he offers to come back and be young again (not old, full of regret). Even the Edith Piaf song they use to signal ten seconds before kick translates to "No, I regret nothing." And there's so many scenes where Ellen Page is talking to Leo, getting him to reveal his issues, in the same way that Eames tricks Fischer into revealing his issues. Also, Leo's kids are the same age at the end, right?
I'm not trying to be authoritative, so this is just my understanding of how I approached it from my work on it. But you're saying it's like some sort of crazy-ass psychotherapy session where the whole thing is a constructed narrative of massive complexity only to distract Cobb so that he will achieve his change? I mean sure, you could totally say that that's what it is. In a way, that's what we're doing to Fischer, so it's not unfounded.

The problem for me is that you're using negative evidence to support a story that isn't there. I don't know what to say about a character who only exists before and after the movie. You're talking about a character who isn't onscreen. And I mean on one hand, it's awesome that this movie can sustain that kind of discussion. It shows you just how well-thought-through and comprehensive it is, but I mean I don't know where that kind of speculation ends. It's like people who are convinced 9/11 is an inside job. It's a mental heuristic failure to think that one or two minor details explain absolutely everything. I mean, kids wear the same clothes all the time.

To me, it's a far more elegant story if it's a vast job that Leo has to pull off. The threat is real, the growth is real, the adversary is real. The weakness of "It's all a dream" — why we hate that, why we feel cheated when narratively anything is revealed to be all a dream — is that you've just asked me to spend so much time and emotional capital investing in the stakes of this, and you've now swept it away with the most anti-narrative structuralism that doesn't have anything to substitute in its place. It's laughing at you for even taking it seriously. You don't want to feel like a victim of the narrative, and I don't think Christopher Nolan would do that.

From - http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/inceptions_dileep_rao_answers.html

[Sleazy]

leo was in a dream the whole time, i thought it was really obvious from early on and got bored with the constant explaining of the rules like the audience is a bunch of brain dead retards or something.

he got his wife’s totem in the dream and that's why the totem isn't reliable because he never really knew it's imperfections and also because his wife was still alive and therefore it was a product of the dream for him and had known imperfections that could be faked. he couldn't use it to distinguish reality. if it stopped or not in the end doesn't matter. this is the same reason that mal was always fucking up his plans, she was trying to get him to realize that the world wasn't real that they were in so that he'd kill himself and come back to reality with her. this is also supported by the fact that only leo could create projections in other people’s dreams. It was because they were his dreams and they were all his projections save mal. they gave it all away when mal told him "do you really think this is your life chasing around super corporations like a spy." basically they were both experimenting with going deeper and deeper into dreams, time gets slower and slower and they lived a whole life time and got bored. leo then planted the idea that they weren't in reality to his wife which worked. however he made the mistake of thinking that he'd be able to tell when they had gone up enough levels. however he wasn't able to but mal was. mal was sabotaging his dreams because she wanted him to die and come out to be back with her and the kids.

it seems kind of obvious. or you have to believe that he's really this super mind raider spy that's a gun for hire for corporate espionage, who's wanted for murdering his own wife and then able to have the charges completely erased without even having to go to trial after completing a mission.
what's more believable? and not to mention the fact that the director threw it out there explicitly when mal pointed this out. that line wasn't in there for nothing...

over all i thought the film was weaker than all the movies that it was stealing from (cell, vanalli sky, first matrix, 6th sense, etc...) and i thought that it had poor pacing, too much time spent on explaining the same concepts over and over and not enough creativity on the dream worlds (like matrix and cell). the whole snow world was an unnecessary and boring james bond rip where a bunch of nobodies were shooting at each other and i just found myself sitting there waiting for the predictable cliff hanger where he'd reveal that leo was the one that was actually dreaming (ala 6th sense, vanalli sky) for 2 hours and the whole time thinking that any minute he was about to take the whole cell concept and step it way the fuck up with some super creative worlds but then you get snow world and a sky scraper. it wasn't horrible but for me it wasn't as good as any of the moives it borrowed so heavily from.  i mean they start out by showing all this p@radox stuff and then only used it once in the whole film. I was expecting him to get all super mc Escher on the level designs but instead it was die hard and then james bond.

[Prison Wallet]

There's no solid answer or riddle to be worked out. It was written to be ambiguous. I'm sure the writer set out with the intention of writing a story which people couldn't figure out if it was a dream or real.

Sleazy I'm on the same page as far as it seeming like a dream from end to end but I'd ad that the whole idea of inception or dream sharing was dream fantasy as well. Same goes for all the levels and what not.

[russ]

like the audience is a bunch of brain dead retards or something.

The local news in my town recommend that people see the movie multiple times to "get it".  So yeah the majority of the audience is brain dead regular.

[Sleazy]

they spent at least 45 minutes of the moive talking about the ground rules. does it really take 45 minutes to understand that

- each person uses a token that is imperfectected to determine if they are dreaming
- the world is inside one persons dream where others can enter and they have the power to alter that world in the same way the dreamer does
- the world is created in the persons dream but if it becomes to obviously unreal then they will notice and the projections will attack
- if you die in the dream then simply wake up except when using deep sedatives allowing for longer dreams in which case dying results in being lost in limbo (i.e. coma)
- in dreams time goes by faster and as you go deeper the effect increases exponentially (we've all taken 5 minute naps and experienced this effect)

and then plot wise

- super merger is about to take place which will eleminate competition in the energy markets and create the worlds first corporate super power and the way to stop this is by using inception (i.e. planting of an idea) in a dream. inception is only possible if the subject is the one that plants the idea so it requires multiple levels of dream to accomplish. one level to inject the idea, then a second level so that the dreamer feels the idea is his own.

i mean is it really that complicated especially when considering the other films that have already been done in this genre? is it really likely that anyone wacthing this hasn't seen matrix, 6th sense and vanalli sky? if you've seen those moives you already know most of how the reality in a dream based movies work and seen the same cliff hanger in every one of these movies before.  the director could have at least thrown another level on the cliff hanger, maybe make leo not realize he’s dreaming and that his wife is alive and then have him think that he has to kill her to free her but then he really kills her. just something different than the same old “he’s really dreaming” thing.

[All Hail Wu Welsh]

leo was in a dream the whole time, i thought it was really obvious from early on and got bored with the constant explaining of the rules like the audience is a bunch of brain dead retards or something.

he got his wife’s totem in the dream and that's why the totem isn't reliable because he never really knew it's imperfections and also because his wife was still alive and therefore it was a product of the dream for him and had known imperfections that could be faked. he couldn't use it to distinguish reality. if it stopped or not in the end doesn't matter. this is the same reason that mal was always fucking up his plans, she was trying to get him to realize that the world wasn't real that they were in so that he'd kill himself and come back to reality with her. this is also supported by the fact that only leo could create projections in other people’s dreams. It was because they were his dreams and they were all his projections save mal. they gave it all away when mal told him "do you really think this is your life chasing around super corporations like a spy." basically they were both experimenting with going deeper and deeper into dreams, time gets slower and slower and they lived a whole life time and got bored. leo then planted the idea that they weren't in reality to his wife which worked. however he made the mistake of thinking that he'd be able to tell when they had gone up enough levels. however he wasn't able to but mal was. mal was sabotaging his dreams because she wanted him to die and come out to be back with her and the kids.

it seems kind of obvious. or you have to believe that he's really this super mind raider spy that's a gun for hire for corporate espionage, who's wanted for murdering his own wife and then able to have the charges completely erased without even having to go to trial after completing a mission.
what's more believable? and not to mention the fact that the director threw it out there explicitly when mal pointed this out. that line wasn't in there for nothing...

over all i thought the film was weaker than all the movies that it was stealing from (cell, vanalli sky, first matrix, 6th sense, etc...) and i thought that it had poor pacing, too much time spent on explaining the same concepts over and over and not enough creativity on the dream worlds (like matrix and cell). the whole snow world was an unnecessary and boring james bond rip where a bunch of nobodies were shooting at each other and i just found myself sitting there waiting for the predictable cliff hanger where he'd reveal that leo was the one that was actually dreaming (ala 6th sense, vanalli sky) for 2 hours and the whole time thinking that any minute he was about to take the whole cell concept and step it way the fuck up with some super creative worlds but then you get snow world and a sky scraper. it wasn't horrible but for me it wasn't as good as any of the moives it borrowed so heavily from.  i mean they start out by showing all this p@radox stuff and then only used it once in the whole film. I was expecting him to get all super mc Escher on the level designs but instead it was die hard and then james bond.

your opinion lost a lot of credibility when you compared this to the fuckin Cell with Jennifer lopez

[able]

when I left the theater I didn't fully
grasp what I had just seen.
There were still some questions
I was sorting out.

that doesn't make me
or anyone else a "person"

If you THINK you grasped it completely
from the first viewing... congrats! Here's a high five
there's no need to insult anyone

on the subject of big headed people...
I know a couple of arrogant blowhards
who were all "I totally got it" blah, blah, blah
hell, I even ran into one before I left the damn theater
This girl was all..." in the end, it was like a dream... duh"
I asked "how do you know that?" She rolled her eyes
and said "cause the like the spinner thingy didn't stop,
don't you remember the rules?"
ahhh stupid arrogance... 

[Sleazy]

i didn't mean to imply that not getting the film meant that someone was a person. it was just that for me the way that he kept cover the same ground over and over again made it feel that way. i don't feel some sense of accomplishment for getting a film that frankly would have been harder to get if so many other films hadn't done the exact same material. but come on, after seeing all the other films form this genre it's just not as ground breaking and he really didn't add much more to it other than the layering and exponential complexity thing.

your opinion lost a lot of credibility when you compared this to the fuckin Cell with Jennifer lopez

the cell had way better set design, was way more creative with the dream worlds and sorry but jennifer lopez was way hotter in that film and a better actress than ellen page and she didn't look like she was 15 so a guy over 30 can actually notice her hotness without feeling creepy. not feeling ellen at all. plust the cell wasn't all g i joe about violence, it was way gnarly.

[able]

the cell had way better set design, was way more creative with the dream worlds and sorry but jennifer lopez was way hotter in that film and a better actress than ellen page and she didn't look like she was 15 so a guy over 30 can actually notice her hotness without feeling creepy. not feeling ellen at all. plust the cell wasn't all g i joe about violence, it was way gnarly.

I'm with you on that.

[loophole]

since ellen page is a little older than me i get a kick out of her looking younger. i'd smash so hard that even hansen would put his ear to the ground.

[able]

that post kinda reminded me of this...


http://twitter.com/kfuckingp

KUCKINGP

Making my own blockbuster movie tonight - "CONCEPTION"
4:58 PM Jul 20th via Twitter for iPhone

[Useless Wooden Bench]

Please let this be the next movie Antwuan reviews for Supra's "Antwuan Goes To The Movies" segment!

[All Hail Wu Welsh]

i didn't mean to imply that not getting the film meant that someone was a person. it was just that for me the way that he kept cover the same ground over and over again made it feel that way. i don't feel some sense of accomplishment for getting a film that frankly would have been harder to get if so many other films hadn't done the exact same material. but come on, after seeing all the other films form this genre it's just not as ground breaking and he really didn't add much more to it other than the layering and exponential complexity thing.

Expand Quote

your opinion lost a lot of credibility when you compared this to the fuckin Cell with Jennifer lopez

[close]

the cell had way better set design, was way more creative with the dream worlds and sorry but jennifer lopez was way hotter in that film and a better actress than ellen page and she didn't look like she was 15 so a guy over 30 can actually notice her hotness without feeling creepy. not feeling ellen at all. plust the cell wasn't all g i joe about violence, it was way gnarly.

I know every movie thread on here has to have at least one guy who going to try and shit on a movie no matter how good it is, but you're now trying to argue that the cell is a better movie.  Argue that the matrix series are better movies dealing with dream scenarios, fine because they are actually well constructed, impressive films; the cel however is not, its got a weak as fuck plot, supported by weak actors, are you gonna try and argue that vince vaughn did a better job than leo or joesph levitt did too?  Yes, you're entitled to your opinion, but when its a nonsensical as saying the cell is a overall better film, you should be called out on it.

[Sleazy]

matrix 2 & 3 were crap for me. there was no mystery left and then it just became starwars with weird editing. so we are different there.

and if you don't think this scene is a more creative, interesting use of the idea of dream worlds than anything in inception then we just don't see eye to eye



there's so much miss opportunity in this film. i think this npr review kind of sums up how i felt pretty well. the scene with ellen when she first went into a dream had me hyped that it was going to be lots of really creative worlds but then it was all down hill from there. plus the the fact that the violence was so g i joe just really pulled me out of it a little more also. not a single good guy died and all it was was shooting at random nameless bad guys.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128493953

i didn't think the movie was terrible, just weakest in the genre and weakest by this director.

[All Hail Wu Welsh]

matrix 2 & 3 were crap for me. there was no mystery left and then it just became starwars with weird editing. so we are different there.

and if you don't think this scene is a more creative, interesting use of the idea of dream worlds than anything in inception then we just don't see eye to eye



there's so much miss opportunity in this film. i think this npr review kind of sums up how i felt pretty well. the scene with ellen when she first went into a dream had me hyped that it was going to be lots of really creative worlds but then it was all down hill from there. plus the the fact that the violence was so g i joe just really pulled me out of it a little more also. not a single good guy died and all it was was shooting at random nameless bad guys.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128493953

i didn't think the movie was terrible, just weakest in the genre and weakest by this director.

To me Levitt's fight scene was infinitely more creative, and visually impressing than that was, that to me was just a poor display of cgi.  When you're dealing with visualizing dreams in movies, it's real easy to throw whatever the fuck you want into it, because you dont have to do anything to justify it because "it's a dream".  But let's be honest how many dreams  can you remember that you've had where something even remotely close to the scene you just posted happened, me personally I can't think of a single one.  What I feel nolan was trying to do was to keep a certain realism within these dream worlds, hence why he was constantly bombarding the viewer with crazy visuals.

[CUDDLEMONSTER]

Expand Quote

matrix 2 & 3 were crap for me. there was no mystery left and then it just became starwars with weird editing. so we are different there.

and if you don't think this scene is a more creative, interesting use of the idea of dream worlds than anything in inception then we just don't see eye to eye



there's so much miss opportunity in this film. i think this npr review kind of sums up how i felt pretty well. the scene with ellen when she first went into a dream had me hyped that it was going to be lots of really creative worlds but then it was all down hill from there. plus the the fact that the violence was so g i joe just really pulled me out of it a little more also. not a single good guy died and all it was was shooting at random nameless bad guys.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128493953

i didn't think the movie was terrible, just weakest in the genre and weakest by this director.

[close]

To me Levitt's fight scene was infinitely more creative, and visually impressing than that was, that to me was just a door display of cgi.  When you're dealing with visualizing dreams in movies, it's real easy to throw whatever the fuck you want into it, because all you dont have to do anything to justify it because "it's a dream".  But let's be honest how many dreams  can you remember that you've had where something even remotely close to the scene you just posted happened, me personally I can't think of a single one, and I am pretty good at remembering dreams.  What I feel nolan was trying to do was to keep a certain realism within these dream worlds, hence why he was constantly bombarding the viewer with crazy visuals.

word. levitt's fight scene was filmed using a set that spun 360 degrees. that scene from the cell (along with most of the movie) was flmed in front of a green screen. which do you think takes more creative talent from set designers, actors, and directors? the guys who actually build a spinning set and then have an amazingly shot scene with real effort from their actors? or the guys who fucking outsource their visuals to some team of video game nerds? that sequence in inception was a film nbd, while the cell was a meaningless wankfest based on the most "danked out" visuals their no-name director could come up with. not even close.

[Sleazy]

that was a good scene but not ndb

[grimcity]

I downloaded The Cell when it came to theaters, then went and saw it on the screen and bought the DVD when it came out. The story was good enough, but the fucking art and art references in there were gorgeous.




"Where do you come from?"

...fucking love that shit!

[Smell Good]

I thought it was crazy how Cobb decided to exit the limbo world with his wife by laying their heads on a railroad to get their heads crushed by a train.

Couldn't he just conjure up a gun and kill her and then himself instead of planting that idea in her head?

[frisco]

This is rare, but I fully disagree with Sleazy on this. I am a big fan or Tarsem Singh. The director of both the Cell and The Fall. The Fall is one of my favourite movies of all time, and the most impressive thing about it, no cgi was used. The Cell, visually, is really dope. However the story is ridiculously weak to use as a comparable to Inception. Jennifer Lopez's side story of entering the killers dream had zero effect to the plot, the police found the location where the girl was going to drown. I in no way would say that someones credibility is lost for comparing this film to The Cell, everythings subjective. Something that I might find to be amazing might be a piece of shit to someone else. Theres no right or wrong way to make a movie about dreams, The Cell is about the mind of a seriel killer, so naturally itll be dark as fuck with really creepy images. Where as Inception is more of a bank heist movie that takes place in other peoples dreams. Im amazed with how Nolan pulled this off. 

Im so hyped for Tarsem Singhs new movie "Immortals", will for sure be checking that one out.

[cops keep firing]

all of the bickering and criticism has taken the joy out of seeing this movie.
i enjoyed it but after reading shit in the ny times and every which and what on the internet,
i feel i can't even trust my own judgement on the movie i just saw. pretty shitty...

i'm gonna see it one more time and try to forget all the shit people are saying.
if you like it sick and if you don't well then go watch twilight or some shit.

[friendly dave]

leo was in a dream the whole time, i thought it was really obvious from early on and got bored with the constant explaining of the rules like the audience is a bunch of brain dead retards or something.

he got his wife’s totem in the dream and that's why the totem isn't reliable because he never really knew it's imperfections and also because his wife was still alive and therefore it was a product of the dream for him and had known imperfections that could be faked. he couldn't use it to distinguish reality. if it stopped or not in the end doesn't matter. this is the same reason that mal was always fucking up his plans, she was trying to get him to realize that the world wasn't real that they were in so that he'd kill himself and come back to reality with her. this is also supported by the fact that only leo could create projections in other people’s dreams. It was because they were his dreams and they were all his projections save mal. they gave it all away when mal told him "do you really think this is your life chasing around super corporations like a spy." basically they were both experimenting with going deeper and deeper into dreams, time gets slower and slower and they lived a whole life time and got bored. leo then planted the idea that they weren't in reality to his wife which worked. however he made the mistake of thinking that he'd be able to tell when they had gone up enough levels. however he wasn't able to but mal was. mal was sabotaging his dreams because she wanted him to die and come out to be back with her and the kids.

it seems kind of obvious. or you have to believe that he's really this super mind raider spy that's a gun for hire for corporate espionage, who's wanted for murdering his own wife and then able to have the charges completely erased without even having to go to trial after completing a mission.
what's more believable? and not to mention the fact that the director threw it out there explicitly when mal pointed this out. that line wasn't in there for nothing...

over all i thought the film was weaker than all the movies that it was stealing from (cell, vanalli sky, first matrix, 6th sense, etc...) and i thought that it had poor pacing, too much time spent on explaining the same concepts over and over and not enough creativity on the dream worlds (like matrix and cell). the whole snow world was an unnecessary and boring james bond rip where a bunch of nobodies were shooting at each other and i just found myself sitting there waiting for the predictable cliff hanger where he'd reveal that leo was the one that was actually dreaming (ala 6th sense, vanalli sky) for 2 hours and the whole time thinking that any minute he was about to take the whole cell concept and step it way the fuck up with some super creative worlds but then you get snow world and a sky scraper. it wasn't horrible but for me it wasn't as good as any of the moives it borrowed so heavily from.  i mean they start out by showing all this p@radox stuff and then only used it once in the whole film. I was expecting him to get all super mc Escher on the level designs but instead it was die hard and then james bond.

Some vaild points. My retort is to the the "what seems more believable?" at the beginning of the 4th paragraph. All story points aside, it is just a movie, so I don't think what's more believable can really be a factor. Where's your suspension of disbelief? Look at Mullholland Drive, or a lot of David Lynch films. They don't have to make sense. Shit, Burn After Reading was a good movie, and it was a total what the fuck story.

[Sleazy]

actually, i made pretty good sense of most of david lynch's films. a friends of mine and i used to watch them seperately and then get together after the film and compare notes and we always matched up. that's the beautiful thing about lynch films, they are fully watchable without digging deeper but there is real thematic substance that can also be followed and that basically drives the events in the film. you can usually predict plot events in lynch films if you are able to follow the themes because he does the opposite of most films. most films have a plot who's bi-product is thematic while lynch has a themes who's bi-product is plot.

and to further my argument for always in a dream for inception... i figured there would be a way to incorporate the other rule about how dreams just start and you don't really know where you came from. if you think about that in the context of the outer most layer of inception that would be the super merger level. on this level things just start. there's no background about how he got started doing this work, how he built the relationship with the asian guy that hired him, really no background at all it starts rigtht in the middle of things. now i realize that in isolation this probably wouldn't be significant but when the director is throwing out obvious hints by directly saying the rules then it's hard to ignore the fact that this directly satisfys one of the litmus that he put out there for determining if something was a dream.

but the strongest argument is still leo's projections (mal and the kids). i can't think of another reasonable explanation given the rules of the film for him being able to create projections in other peoples dreams besides the most obvious which is that they are in fact his dream (if you got an idea please post it up). this explaination requires no suspension of disbelief. i think it's a cop out to suggest that the director would go to such lengths to create a thinking mans film but then provide no real structure, effectively making it not a thinking mans film. it makes more sense that the explicit rules and implicit themes (wedding ring, etc...) of the film would allow you to determine what happened in the film. how unsatisfying of a movie would this be if it really was completely random? that doesn't really make sense to me.

[Sleazy]

also the fact that leo broke his own rule about not creating real things in dreams back this up too. him creating real elements in his dream was part of what trapped him in the dream as he had warned ellen's charater. him doing this made it harder to tell when he reached the top level.

[buttpirate]

This is rare, but I fully disagree with Sleazy on this. I am a big fan or Tarsem Singh. The director of both the Cell and The Fall. The Fall is one of my favourite movies of all time, and the most impressive thing about it, no cgi was used. The Cell, visually, is really dope. However the story is ridiculously weak to use as a comparable to Inception. Jennifer Lopez's side story of entering the killers dream had zero effect to the plot, the police found the location where the girl was going to drown. I in no way would say that someones credibility is lost for comparing this film to The Cell, everythings subjective.

I thought this was Sleazy's point in comparing it to the Cell - for visuals rather than plotline.  The dream sequences in it were intricately detailed and absolutely gorgeous, and his argument was that Inception's don't match up to it very well.  I agree with this, but still thought the movie was great. 

Another interpretation of the movie is that it's about the filmmaking process (the team representing the director and production crew), and should be read similar to Fellini's 8 & 1/2



FOR PEOPLE WATCHING IT A SECOND TIME

Watch closely at the part where Cobb meets Yusuf the chemist, and goes into the basement.  In it we see dozens of dream addicts, addicted to his serum, as "dreaming is their reality".  Cobb tries it, and immediately wakes up a second later to say it was good.  He goes into the bathroom and tests out the totem, however it falls off the sink as opposed to stopping.  At this point in I believe that he's actually still under, and the rest of the movie is basically Cobb's dream - the serum is supposed to allow for a deeper sleep and multiple dream levels for the user (they say two is the most that have ever been done and three is pushing it, but Cobb ends up going to do 5; 6 if you count the movie as his dream).

From what I remember the editing changes noticeably at this point, everything starts becoming faster and people end up at other places very quickly - the vague dreaminess hidden within a build-up montage.  Cobb spends the rest of the movie trying to redeem himself over the guilt of Mal's suicide so he can see their children.  'Inception' in this case is provided in the real world by Saito, who gives Cobb the chance to dream again.

At least that's my reading of it.  Leo's character goes out of his mind and gets stuck in limbo while the rest of the crew watches him try the serum to get ready for the job in real life.