Inception is the exception this summer...

Inception
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy
Director: Christopher Nolan
Rating: 5 (out of 5)

Summary: Taking place in a world of psychological espionage, Leonardo DiCaprio is given the opportunity to return home to his family if he can perform the task of entering someone's dreams and planting an idea that the dreamer will feel he developed himself. Can this impossible "inception" be possible?

In a disappointing summer blockbuster season, Inception stands above every other movie with a smug look on its face and not a care in the world. This is by far and away the most exciting, innovative, baffling and fantastic film this year and firmly establishes Christopher Nolan as a director with balls. He's not afraid to make a $180 million summer movie which asks you to engage your brain, asks you to put down the fizzy beverage and the large smuggled in packet of Haribos and actually think about the images you're seeing on the screen instead of looking on with a dead eye expression. In summary, Inception is Memento on a Dark Knight budget and does not disappoint.

The film jumps into the action almost immediately and does not let up. Leonardo DiCaprio runs, jumps and shoots through Ken Watanabe's subconscious like a half remembered nightmare. As this prologue unfolds the rules of the games are revealed. A game where you're as vulnerable in your sleep as a sleeping toddler at the Freddy Krueger day care centre as your mind is puppeteered by Christopher Nolan's expert hands.

Just like Shutter Island earlier in the year, Leonardo DiCaprio gives a psychologically scarred performance which just shows how he is becoming the actor of a generation. Gone is the skinny, floppy haired heartthrob to be replaced with a performer of real gravitas and depth. The same could be said of Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ellen Page, a supporting cast of up and comers that exude confidence and bravado in the infancy of their Hollywood careers. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard is also suitably unhinged and seductive as the bane of DiCaprio's subconscious.

Like all good magicians Nolan never reveals how he managed to pull off the trick of making an existential heist movie that plays like the love child of The Matrix and Ocean's Eleven directed by M.C Escher. Every time the curtain is pulled back, another one falls in its place and revealing too much about the plot would be redundant and ultimately detrimental to your movie going experience. Challenge yourself to unravel its mysteries, break the puzzle and you will certainly feel more satisfied for doing so. Just enjoy being the puppet and remember that no matter how many superlatives are thrown at this film there is simply no way to describe its superiority over every other this year - it's movie mastery at its very best.