Inception

Inception has Leonardo DiCaprio as a “dream thief” who infiltrates and alters other people’s dreams, and finds himself caught in a limbo of dream worlds, which the movie tries at considerable length to explain without ever doing much more than parroting the inbred logic of its relentlessly preposterous plot. It’s an elaborately pedantic scheme whose lone virtue is that it serves as a good excuse for some bizarre mixtures of action fantasy and special effects. Screenwriter/director Christopher Nolan’s story mixes fictional dream science and a kind of inner-space espionage, but neither the science nor the espionage matters much here. Mainly it posits a story world in which Leo and company are caught up in dreams within dreams—and eventually a dream within a dream within another dream. But even that aspect of it doesn’t really take off, action- and entertainment-wise, until the film is well into its protracted final phases. Dreams within dreams are OK by me, and so much the better when Nolan and company finally do get around to delivering some good spacey multiple-dreamzone action. Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated PG-13