There may not be a hotter name in Hollywood right now than Christopher Nolan.  The writer/director has an unbroken string of critical and financial successes with movies that are universally praised for their vision and uniqueness.  Nolan burst on the scene in 2000 with the inventive “Memento”, followed up with “Insomnia” (maybe his least known film…I highly recommend it), then became known to everyone with “Batman Begins”, “The Prestige” and “The Dark Knight”.

Even as he was filming “Memento”, Nolan was working on the concepts that would become his latest film, “Inception”.  The work he put in to create this unbelievable world of intermingling fantasy and reality was well worth it, as I feel we have our first film of the year that is a lock for one of the ten Best Picture nominees.

My first word of warning when talking about a film that will be very hard to describe in much detail without spoilers:  Don’t come in late.  One thing I love about Nolan’s scripts is that he has no problem challenging the intellect of the audience, and will not dumb things down for masses.  Consequently, he does not pull an M. Night Shyamalan by spending a third of the movie just explaining things.  You are brought immediately into the world in which someone can “connect” to another person’s dreams, and in doing so, steal information (Extraction) from them.

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It is finally here.

The first weekend of 2010 where there is a movie with so much buzz, word of mouth, and critical praise that it is being called “Must See”.

I’m just hoping that the hype isn’t too much, and I end up being disappointed.  You’ll know later this weekend.

Mini Review - “A Single Man”

So here we have a movie that could be describe as “Mad Men for Gays”.

A bit crass, perhaps, but somewhat accurate.  No, I don’t mean “for Gays” in terms of it being like “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” in being flamboyantly gay, but only in the sense that the main character is a gay man dealing with the loss of his partner of 16 years in a time (1963) when most homosexuals still did not dare leave the closet.

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Some credit must be given to the creative team responsible for making “Predators”.  Given the recent rash of lame remakes, sequels, TV show adaptations, and blatant rip-offs, the Robert Rodriguez produced sci-fi horror movie can actually be said to be somewhat original.

Original in that it is a sequel in only the loosest terms; one that touches base only briefly to the original 1987 Schwarzenegger hit in order to help establish some of the plot line, while it wisely ignores any of the subsequent sequels…especially the ridiculous “Alien Vs. Predator” series.

Shifting venues from Earth to an unknown star system also helps with the originality, as well as giving a truly bang-up opening.  You know right from the beginning that this is an action flick, as the first scene you see is of Adrien Brody’s character Royce waking up while in free fall.  Once his parachute has deployed, he quickly discovers that he is in a strange place with seven others; all but one of which are some form of killers…American Black Ops (Royce), a female Israeli Defense Forces sniper, a Russian military bruiser, a Yakuza Mafioso, a Tijuana drug enforcer, a Sierra Leone soldier, a wacko federal prisoner snatched from death row, along with a doctor snatched from a city street.

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So I really wanted to get out last week and watch “The Last Airbender”.

OK…that may be true in the same line as saying “I really wanted to go to the doctor for that colonoscopy last week”.

In truth, I haven’t had a movie in some time where I’ve just been able to vent my spleen, Dan Gilbert style, against a truly rotten film in awhile (mini-reviews don’t count), and nothing could provide a better target than the latest M. Night Shyamalan stinker.  It seemed to have all the components for a nastily constructed Spergeon Wynn rating with lots and lots of snarky comments.

But why bother?

Truth is; M. Night is a hack who has made yet another horrible movie.  Been there; done that.  And frankly, I was like everyone else in Northeast Ohio, a little too fixated on the 3 Ring Circus being conducted by LeQuit James.  So why would I intentionally spend ten bucks to watch a complete piece of crap?  The answer was; I couldn’t.  Besides, I had something much crappier to watch.

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