Movie Review: "Inception"

I went to see Inception on Saturday night and I believe my general reaction coming out of the theater was:

OMGOMGOMG! THAT WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER!

And I still feel that way. The movie was spectacular! It was edgy, it was new, it had a convoluted plot that I still followed, it had nothing that wasn't needed, and the script impressed the living shit out of me. As a writer, I am in awe. It's the kind of book/movie that I would love to be able to write (and hope one day I will write). The actors were great, all of them, even DiCaprio, who I usually have reservations about. I will admit that at the beginning of the movie I thought DiCaprio didn't quite have a handle on his character, but that he sort of settled in as the movie progressed. I'm not sure if this was because they filmed those segments first and he and the director hadn't worked things out yet for this character, or if we as an audience just didn't know enough about the character to make me care (we learn a lot more about this character as the film progresses), but in the end DiCaprio's character became meaningful and his acting was good. Everyone else did a stellar job with their characters immediately.

This movie has the potential to confuse the audience, since it involves dreams within dreams within dreams, and I'm certain that a sizable chunk of the audience this past weekend came away from the theater going "WTH?" Take my group for instance. I went with two other people. I followed everything, almomst literally. But I realize that I'm a writer and convoluted plots are my thing, so I expected to follow everything. If I hadn't, this wouldn't be the great review that it is. One of the others said he followed everything, but had tons of questions about how come this and why that. So he followed the plot but didn't pick up on all of the mechanics of how everything worked. The third person said that he got lost about an hour into the movie. I'm expecting this to be the general breakup of the movie-going public that sees this. For those that got confused, let me just say that absolutely everything in this movie worked and fit together and is there for a reason. I found nothing that they didn't tell us that wasn't used somehow during the course of the movie, which impresses the shit out of me. There were moments in that first hour where I thought, Ok, ok, ok, let's move on, but after seeing the whole thing realized there wasn't anything that they could have cut really. That said, the movie doesn't really get going until they enter the first level of the main plot's dream. And after that, the movie doesn't stop.

A spectacular movie. I strongly suggest that everyone go see this one. And if you get confused, go see it again. Trust me, it all makes sense and fits together. And I sincerely hope that Hollywood realizes what the success of this movie really means: we don't want bad sequels to blockbuster movies, or restarts of old ideas. We'd really like to see some new shit, like this, up on the screen.

Book Review: "The Frost-Haired Vixen" by John Zakour

The Frost-Haired Vixen is the fourth novel in the Zachary Nixon Johnson private investigator of the future series, although this is the first of the series to be written solo by John Zakour. The previous three books were co-written with Lawrence Ganem. So I wasn interested to see how, if at all, the book changed in comparison to the others.





And there was a change. This book isn't quite as frantic in the action department as the previous three novels and I found that I liked this. In the other novels, I almost felt like the book was too out-of-control at times, because no matter where the main character went or what he did, SOMETHING tried to kill him. For amusement, that was fine in the first book, but by the third it was getting kind of boring. We don't have that in this novel. Sure, there are places where he gets attacked, but those attacks are as common or as relentless, and they all played a role in the overall plot. Some of the attacks in the previous novels seemed random and arbitrary.

I also feel like the main character is much more solid and settled in this book than in the previous ones. He came across as much more real with his interactions with his girlfriend, Electra, for example (and thank you for not having every interaction with her be her beating him up because she's ticked off about his job). I also felt the relationship with his implanted computer, HARV, was much better as well.

So I liked the character better and the writing, but the plot was only so-so. Much easier to follow, less convoluted, easier to understand (which is all good) . . . but not quite as interesting as some of the previous novels. The main idea here is that in the new world there's a new holiday called The Holiday, in which everyone on the planet gets three gifts. One is one that they wish for and the other two are decided upon by the coordinator of The Holiday, Santana (the Frost-Haired Vixen of the title, we assume), and her covey of elves who live at the North Pole. Zach is called in because someone has killed two of the elves and Santana wants to know who. Of course there's a plot to destroy the world and Zach uncovers and stops it, but I won't tell you what the plot actually is, nor how he stops it. That's the fun of the book after all.

And even with my hesitation over the plot, the book was indeed fun. I laughed more reading this than the latest Janet Evanovich novel I read, and I certainly had a lot more fun with Zach and HARV and crew. I think that John Zakour has certainly shown he can write a good, entertaining novel on his own, and I'm looking forward to reading the next few in this series.