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‘Dream worlds, alternate realities, virtual reality and memory manipulation are all, naturally, recurrent themes in sci-fi literature and cinema. Christopher Nolan’s Hollywood blockbuster [Inception], populated by a fittingly starry cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy and Michael Caine, slickly manages to combine depth and bombast in the director’s self-penned reverse-heist film. Inception is a love story, a film noir, crime drama and action flick wrapped around a sci-fi narrative framework; it’s ambitious and brash, it’s also smart and exceptionally well realised. Dream worlds have rarely, if ever, looked so dazzling on screen, and Nolan’s intricately plotted screenplay is grounded by the interweaving of real human drama into the fantasy elements on display. Conceptually grandiose and with dream landscapes that are themselves reflective of the design and technical construction of films and video-games, Inception showed that the words cerebral and blockbuster needn’t be mutually exclusive.’ British Film Institute

M | Violence