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I am preternaturally disposed to not liking Christopher Nolan movies. I don’t know why but a lot his work rubs me the wrong way. I feel that he’s too showy: a wink and a nod to how neat all this film working, the writing, the directing, the acting, is great — acknowledge it. So I approached watching his latest “greatness,” Inception, with trepidation.

Right from the start he didn’t disappoint. There were scenes with lots of talking, exposition, saying rather than doing. It was all too verbose for me. I wanted some action. If I don’t get some action, I’m going to get up and go.

Then the heist began, the trippy shit started happening, and Inception became a much better movie. I realized all that early speechifying helped explain how the heist would work, but all that speechifying just made for a boring movie. It’s as if Hitchcock explained his McGuffins.

I really liked the latter half of the movie. As the heist unfolded, I sat right up in my seat and enjoyed the convoluted structure to the action. It was very inventive and a neat fantasy.

I think I could see this again. Something I thought I wouldn’t say for a Christopher Nolan film.

4 of 5 stars

Predators is the perfect summer movie. Good, but not great. Bad, but not awful. Mediocre.

It dove right into its premise right off the bat like people falling out of planes. It kept moving forward introducing each character/predator victim. They were all archetypes — the sniper, the heavy machine gunner, the shiv wielding con. Every character ripped their roles from a character class in a video game. But the movie kept going forward not stopping for people dying or even plotting. It’s predators hunting human — the dangerous game. That’s the plot in a nutshell and a summary of what to expect from the movie. That’s it, but the job was completed successfully.

3 of 5 stars.