Top 10 Films of 2010 – Henry’s Picks #9

January 10th, 2011 | POSTED BY Henry McComas

EXT. BUS STOP – MORNING

Two adults in their mid-twenties, one man and one woman, stand at a bus stop. The man wears a white T-shirt with the word “courier” printed in black across the chest. The woman, dressed in business-casual clothes, finishes applying lip gloss to her lips, caps the gloss, and nests it back into her purse. The man walks over to the bus schedule, glances at it, then stands next to woman like the schedule was a way of entry to getting close to his female commuter.

MAN

How you doing?

The man rolls up on the balls of his feet, he pushes his hands deep in his pockets.

WOMAN

I’m fine.

The man smiles.

MAN

That’s great! Fine is good.

The woman looks away.

MAN (CONT’D)

Hey have you seen that new
Inception flick yet?

WOMAN

No.

MAN

Really! Oh man, it is really good.

The woman looks down at her watch; she won’t forfeit one peek in the man’s direction.

WOMAN

Haven’t heard of it. What’s it
about?

The man takes his hands out of his pockets. His hands move with his words. There is excitement in his voice.

MAN

Well, it’s about a guy who may or
may not live inside of a dream.
Regardless of the fact that he may
or may not be living in a dream, he
has made a career out of extracting
ideas from other people’s dreams.

The woman sticks her head out in the street. There is no sign of a bus coming.

MAN (CONT’D)

He also has this wife who may or
may not be his subconscious. She
keeps on messing up his job because
she killed herself, but then again
she could have actually been trying
to rescue him from his dream world
that he may or may not be living
in…

The woman pulls out her cellphone and shoots out a quick text.

WOMAN

You don’t say?

MAN

Right? Anyways, he gets this new
gig where he needs to plant a
thought inside of a mogul’s dream.
Planting a thought is called
inception and it’s really dangerous
because it may or may not have
killed his real or dream-world
wife.

The woman puts her phone back into her purse and checks her watch again, like looking at it will make time move just a bit faster.

MAN (CONT’D)

The main guy and his squad of dream
avengers fall asleep on a plane,
van, hotel and a fortress-hospital
thingy in the middle of the snow!
There’s also some weird dream shit
going on in limbo. So this guy is
experiencing a dream within a dream
within a dream within a dream! And
then he wakes up and hugs his kids.

The man stands with his arms and hands spread out like he just revealed the punch line of the world’s greatest joke or conducted an orchestra into Beethoven’s Symphony Number 9. The woman looks at him, her expression blank.

WOMAN

OK.

MAN

But, that could have been a dream
too…

The screech of auto brakes takes attention, followed by a bus pulling up in front of the two commuters.

Inception blew my mind. From fade in to fade out, I was a mouse barricaded by large walls that pushed me along with a story told by Christopher Nolan. Together, we progressed through windy arcs and intriguing subplots. By the end of the film, I felt entertained, fulfilled, and very lost. Only Christopher Nolan could have made a heist film as large and as tight as Inception. It had a structure that was similar to Memento, but instead of showing us a backwards portrait, he presented a layered landscape held together by strings. Any other director could have knocked the landscape off-kilter, ripping one of the strands that held the film together. As an audience we trusted him to lead the way and, in return, Nolan paid it forward with a masterpiece called Inception. By the end of the film I didn’t ask which scene was the real world and which one was the dream…I asked myself which scene was the real dream. And honestly, I couldn’t tell you which was what, and I don’t know if Nolan could. But seriously, who really needs to know when your brain has something as tasty as Inception to snack on?

Inception gets 9th place in my top ten for being awesome and confusing. It was a fantastic film that could helm conversations in many film theory and philosophy classes. I don’t know how much re-watch value it will get from me…if it popped up on the dish while channel surfing, I would watch it to the end, but I can’t imagine putting it in the Blu-ray player on a whim unless I was entertaining some guests, dissecting a scene, or scanning a special feature. Points to Christopher Nolan for casting Michael Caine again; no matter how small the role is, Caine rocks it.

See you next time, when we will chop it up over number 8.

Henry’s Top Ten Films of 2010 Recap
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Inception
10. The Social Network

Honorable Mentions:
Tron: Legacy
Defendor

Sincerely,
HDM – The resident king of narcissism.

Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Ellen Page, Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy