Nolan is exploring dreams and the possibilities are endless, which is why it’s a little disappointing that so much of the film feels like a generic CGI action movie, albeit a high-class one.

| Mar 20, 2024

Inception engaged on a mainly intellectually level, but that isn't to say that film didn't pack an emotional impact.

| Jun 9, 2021

Inception is an intriguing, frustrating film, but ultimately satisfying.

| Dec 30, 2020

This endlessly fascinating swirl of a film could have come only from Nolan, who blends the cerebral twistiness of Memento (his thriller that moves backward in time) with the spectacular action of his Batman megahit, The Dark Knight.

| Feb 7, 2018

Awesome doesn't even begin to describe the sleek, clever, mind-blowing madness that is director Christopher Nolan's aptly titled psychological (read: trippy) thriller Inception.

| Original Score: A | Sep 11, 2017

A spectacular fantasy thriller based on Nolan's own original screenplay, Inception is the smartest CGI head-trip since The Matrix.

| Jul 20, 2015

Invention runs lower once we're on those snowy slopes, and the hard narrative punch keeps disintegrating into a floating cloud of pixels. But what a display they make.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2015

The film's imaginative freefall is ruinously anchored to a bogus sense of deep feeling.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2015

We can only marvel at what writer-director Nolan has thought up and executed so well. But he doesn't know when to stop. Every level leads to another level.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2015

Inception is the kind of information-packed movie that creates the painful/pleasurable sensation that there's no time to think.

| Jul 20, 2015

Inception isn't a dud but nor is it a masterpiece. It's like a very ambitious, overlong potboiler: visually beautiful, ingenious in parts and dragging in others.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2015

Inception is a grown-up thriller ride through the dreamscapes of the mind, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead. The movie is a sign that Hollywood retains some intellectual oomph.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2015

The real cause of wonder, though, is why Nolan should have embraced technocratic complexity in the service of such a puny story.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 20, 2015

If it's the dreamer whose subconscious fills in the details, as the film claims, why the absence of silliness, sex, horror and general abandon?

Full Review | Jul 20, 2015

A heist film of thrilling, almost delirious complexity.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 20, 2015

Even as you tick off the film's overload of references, though -- a Matrix here, a James Bond there -- the amazing effects and Cobb's quest carry you along.

| Jul 20, 2015

It's one thing to simply make up a story, but it's another to come up with a scenario and actually make it feel real and that's exactly what Nolan achieves here.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 13, 2010

An always-tense, extremely suspenseful sci-fi action film that respects a viewer's intelligence.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2010

Intelligent and imaginative Inception is eye bending and mind bending in equal measures.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2010

Nolan is having the time of his life in his own personal playground and, for all its heavy technical and narrative machinery, Inception remains one of his lightest films.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 21, 2010