proximoception

Thought the movie was entertaining, but: (a) insufficient structure had been given to the rules of the dreamworld to make "was it really all a dream?"-type speculation very interesting/fruitful; the rules were fuzzy and somewhat internally arbitrary so as to make intentional ambiguity indistinguishable from stuff that was just unexplained or vague, and therefore less interesting to think about; and (b) I found it very difficult to give a shit about any of the characters. I really didn't care about Cobb's kids or his mental instability. There was nothing to invest me in him. Ellen Page is annoying. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was pretty cool, but spent half the movie floating around a hotel. The British guy was entertaining. (c) Nolan didn't seem to know what to do with the structure. How many times did we have to be shown the slo-mo van to remind us of how the dreamworld is supposed to work? How many of the cuts back to the hotel were really necessary? I didn't really seem like Nolan had a plan for how to convincingly babysit 2 mostly-derelict settings, and I think he made the snow-world scenes more confusing by having to keep going back. I thought the whole thing was pretty sloppy.

Still, fun to watch, if not to think about.