There’s Chris Nolan and there’s everybody else right now.

That was my first thought walking out of Inception a little while ago.  I’m not saying there aren’t other filmmakers capable of making films as thought provoking or visually interesting as him; nothing could be further from the truth.  But with the billion dollar Dark Knight franchise under his belt, Nolan (clearly) has the green light from Warner Brothers to make (dare I say it) original types of films on the budgets he needs to make them.  And to the benefit of the rest of us, he uses that creative freedom and makes films like Inception.

It’s damn near impossible to recommend this movie without sounding like some elitist.  But the film is really intelligent, and there’s a lot to the plot, and a lot to keep track of.  And when it’s over you’re still not 100 percent sure of what you’ve seen.  Various films that are running through my mind as I think of this: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Truman Show, Heat, Eternal Sunshine, The Dark Knight.  Inception is in that category: you get distracted for a minute and you’ll feel lost.  You’ll feel lost anyway but that’s part of the movie’s plot.  The title refers to the idea that an idea can be planted into your subconscious (an ‘inception’).  And trust me when I say that gives away absolutely nothing.

So it’s probably obvious how much I liked the film, but I’ll end on this note as a Batman and a film geek.  The general rule with film trilogies is the third one always sucks.  No need to rehash all the film trilogies here, you know the rare ones where the third film is better than the second (or first).  So up until now most Batman geeks have agreed that after The Dark Knight, if Nolan wanted to walk away we were fine with it.  No way he was topping that.  He announced he was coming back, and we were happy but still not setting our expectations high he could top himself.

Now…I’m thinking it’s at least possible…