Inception: Press reviews

'With physics-defying, thunderous action, heart-wringing emotion and an astonishing performance from DiCaprio, Nolan delivers another true original'

'easily the most original movie idea in ages'

'Inception's world of unhinged imagination is spectacular in the truest sense. It is cinema to set a new generation of filmmakers dreaming.'

' The film is the stuff that dreams are made on, a collaborative work of great technical skill and imaginative detail where everyone is working to help the writer-director realise a personal vision.'

'the most intelligent and visually stunning film of the year.'

'heady, brain-tickling stuff"

'Nolan, it seems to me, has more in common with Spielberg than Kubrick. An ambitious, energetic, technical story-teller, he's perfectly in step with the public imagination. It's his fans who are confused, lost in the happy daydream that he's one step beyond.'

'Almost a classic.'

'Inception's not the deep wow we might have hoped for, just the big one we needed.'

'that rarest of beasts: a slippery, cerebral summer blockbuster that slaloms from illusion to reality and back again and leaves its viewer bewitched, bothered and bewildered'

'All hail Nolan for mastering a higher class of mass entertainment. Like all good science fiction, 'Inception' demands we pay serious attention to pure fantasy on the back of strong ideas and exquisite craft - but it also combines fantasy with real observations about our sleeping lives.'

'a remarkable piece of work'

'It is more like a diverting reverie than a primal nightmare, something to be mused over rather than analyzed, something you may forget as soon as it's over. '

'...is an astonishment, an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly.

'Perhaps [Nolan] needs to remake Inception, sometime in the future, using the budget he had, before international fame, with Memento.'

'Along with technical brilliance and ingenuity, there is something disconcertingly self-important about Inception with a plot that clogs and flags markedly in its final act, and, however gasp-inducing its effects and invented worlds, the story's drive stalls'

'Nolan's creation isn't nearly as dreamy as it promises. Save yourself a few bob: before you go to bed, watch the trailer online, eat some strong blue cheese, and let your slumbering mind write its own script for Inception.'