Before Christopher Nolan’s much anticipated film hits screens, Movies.ie recommends the following mind altering pics to get you in the mood…
In an age where Hollywood is obsessed by reboots, remakes and revamp, it’s refreshing to find anything new in cinema; thankfully we have people like Christopher Nolan to remind us that there’s more to the big screen then actors donning rubber batsuit (not, that we don’t love you Christian Bale…)
In his latest tale, INCEPTION, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a super thief who specializes in dream extraction, a service for which he steals secrets buried in the subconscious while a mark is asleep and most vulnerable. For reasons that are initially unexplaned, Cobb is on the run and cannot return home to his children in the States. Enter, Saito (Ken Watanabe), who offers Dom his life back — if he’ll perform a special job. Saito wants Dom to do plant an idea that will cause the mark, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), to break up his father’s multibillion-dollar corporation for “emotional” reasons…. Queue a series of mind bending, dream, altering paradoxs, which will surely bring a gleeful smile to the faces of every sci-fi enthuaist.
Dreamscape
Another film which delves into the dream world, this 1984 flick starred Dennis Quaid as a gambler with psychic powers. To pay off debts, he is persuaded to take part in an experiment where he links up with sleepers and tours through their dreams, solving a neurosis here, dealing with a demon there. Some of the dreams are funny (one middle-aged man’s fidelity nightmare is hysterical); most are pretty nasty, though, especially a trip through an 8-year-old’s primal fears. In the end, things get a bit silly: Quaid has to save the USA by fighting off the forces of evil in the President’s nightmares. Sound bonkers? Well it was the ‘80s….
The Matrix
Forget the sequels and remember what was good about the 1999 Hong Kong action style picture. Keanu Reeves plays a software specialist leading a secret double life. As ‘Neo’ he’s a computer hacker much in demand. But only when Trinity (Moss) introduces him to charismatic seer Morpheus (Fishburne) does Neo learn that the whole world’s unwittingly in the same boat: life as we know it is merely virtual reality, a ‘matrix’ designed by mankind’s overlords to hold us in unquestioning obeisance…
Memento
Leonard (Guy Pearce) is a man who is struggling to put his life back together after the brutal rape and murder of his wife. But Leonard’s problems are different from those of most people in his situation; he was beaten severely by the same man who killed his wife. The most significant manifestation of Leonard’s injuries is that his short-term memory has been destroyed; he is incapable of retaining any new information, and must resort to copious note-taking and Polaroid photographs in order to keep track of what happens to him over the course of a day (he’s even tattooed himself with a few crucial bits of information he can’t get along without). Leonard retains awareness that his wife was brutally murdered, however, and he’s convinced that the culprit still walks the streets. Leonard is obsessed with the notion of taking revenge against the man who has ruined his life, and he sets out to find him. Another darkly complex tale from Christopher Nolan , Memento is a fragmented, complex and clever narrative that keeps audiences guessing.