Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio    Cobb
Marion Cotillard    Mal
Joseph Gordon Levitt    Arthur
Ellen Page    Ariadne
Ken Watanabe    Saito
Cillian Murphy    Robert Fischer Jnr

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan

Running time: 148 minutes

“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.” Federico Fellini.

In an interview given to The Telegraph, forty year old British director Christopher Nolan said that he has been interested in dreams since he was a child and he wanted to do a film about them for a long time. Mr Nolan must have understood perfectly Fellini’s concept about the language of dreams quoted above. He used it as a basis for for Inception, a science fiction action thriller that travels through time and space telling a story of corporate espionage executed through ‘dream stealing’

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a criminal with exceptional brain powers who claims to be the best extractor of dreams. He believes that a “single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it”. Between one dream and another we learn that Cobb’s wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) is dead and that he is on the run, missing badly his young son and daughter. His career takes a dramatic turn when he is asked by Saito (Ken Watanabe) not to steal a dream but to carry out an inception, place a fixed idea, in someone’s mind. Saito assures Cobb that if he succeeds, all charges against him will be dropped and he can return home to his children in the US. The target is Robert Fischer Jnr (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito’s business rival. Saito wants Robert Fisher to wind up his father’s empire which was threatening to put him out of business.

Christopher Nolan’s story is complicated and demands maximum concentration from the audience who is taken on a series of individual and collective dreams, recurring dreams and dreams within dreams experienced by Cobb and his team of ‘dream’ specialists as they work out their plot. The director brings to the fore Cobb’s personal conflict in dealing with his wife’s death and the absence of his children. And developed his difficult surreal story in his own flair for spectacular action sequences already seen in his blockbusters Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan is known to make little use of computer generated images. For this film he built massive sets in every place he filmed, such as a gigantic fortress on a mountain top in Calgary, Alberta chosen for one of the most exciting, and the longest action pieces of the film.

Apart from Leonardo DiCaprio, once again in top form, the cast includes Michael Caine, Marion Cotilliard, Academy Award winner for La Vie en Rose with a strong dramatic performance as Cobb’s wife Mal and Ellen Page who was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for her amazing role in Juno



Cast:
Bill Nighy    Victor Maynard
Emily Blunt    Rose
Rupert Grint    Tony
Rupert Everett    Ferguson
Ellen Atkins    Luisa Maynard

Directed by Jonathan Lynn

Running time: 98 minutes

When we first see a dapper middle aged gentleman having breakfast and practicing French on an audio cassette we get the impression that he could be any senior civil servant, solicitor or banker ready for an honest day’s work. But we do get the wrong impressions sometimes. The smartly dressed upright gentleman is Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) a professional assassin out on his first killing of the day. Maynard is carrying on a family business inherited from his father and lives under the hawkish eyes of his widowed mother Luisa (Ellen Atkins) who is seriously concerned about the continuation of the business if Victor remains a childless bachelor.

We do not get the wrong impression about the character of a young woman cycling in London’s morning rush hour. Rose (Emily Blunt) breaks every rule and law until she parks her bicycle next to the restoration laboratories inside the National Gallery. Rose is not just a petty law-breaking cyclist. She is checking out on the final touches a friend is giving to a perfect copy of one of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. Disguised under a blonde wig, she manages to sell the fake for £900,000 to Ferguson (Rupert Everett), a gangster with an eye for art treasures. As soon as he discovers that he had been conned, Ferguson hires Maynard to kill Rose. Maynard obliges but botches up his first attempt forcing Ferguson to send his own men to do the job. Enter Tony (Rupert Grinch) a young back-packer who witnesses a garage shoot out between Maynard, now having to protect Rose, and Ferguson’s man and we have a triple alliance of hit man, target and witness ending up hiding from Ferguson’s killers in Victor Maynard’s country mansion.

“Wild Target” should please fans of British black comedy. This genre took a different and a more bloodied turn with Guy Ritchie’s two hits Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). Although the story in Jonathan Lynn’s film does not have the same variety of dumb criminals –there are only two idiot bunglers- or as many funny situations as in Guy Ritchie’s films, it has a good combination of actors who do their best to deliver an entertaining film.

With 100 films and one BAFTA Awards for Love Actually and State of Play both in 2003, Bill Nighy is becoming one of Britain’s most bankable and most versatile actors. From his two turns as Davy Jones in The Pirates of the Caribbean series to his dramatic interpretation of SS General Friedrich Olbrich in Valkyrie Bill Nighy’s performances were always a highlight of the films he starred in. The same can be said for Wild Target where his suave villainy blends to perfection with Emily Blunt’s bubbly performance as a reckless con girl, kleptomaniac and manipulator all combined.



Cast:

Vincent Lindon    Mathias
Pascal Elbe    Antoine
Viginie Ledoyen    Audrey

Directed by Lorraine Levy

Running time 99 min

The third release this week is also set in London. Two old French friends Antoine (Pascal Elbe), an architect and Mathias (Vincent Lindon) are both divorced and have left France to share a house in London’s French quarter to raise Antoine’s young son and Mathias’s young daughter there. This French spoken film with English sub-titles follows the odd couple formula with Antoine a stickler for tidiness and order having to live under the same roof with Mathias, a disorganised disaster. However, in spite of their different attitudes to life, the two friends and their children live in a certain harmony. This harmony becomes seriously threatened when Mathias falls for the charms of Audrey (Virginie Ledoyen) a TV journalist passing through London. The way Mathias handles his relationship with Audrey contrasts sharply with Antoine’s correct dealing of his own love story and emotions.


Top Ten Films in Malta: 14 July - 18 July 2010

1. SHREK FOREVER AFTER - THE FINAL CHAPTER
2. THE TWILIGHT SAGA - ECLIPSE
3. KILLERS
4. PREDATORS
5. PRINCE OF PERSIA - THE SANDS OF TIME
6. GET HIM TO THE GREEK
7. WHEN IN ROME
8. ROBIN HOOD
9. NANNY MCPHEE AND THE BIG BANG
10. BROOKLYN'S FINEST

Films released by KRS Film Distributors Ltd.