Inception

Leonardo DiCaprio plays a guy who shows up in your dreams, which has happened to about 90% of the people reading right now.

DiCaprio stars as Cobb - a man who specializes in breaking into the dreams of corporate titans, stealing important information and selling it to their rivals. It's corporate espionage that goes beyond rifling through the garbage dumpster out behind the factory. However, he has gotten into a bit of a bind.

Cobb and his fellow extractors Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Nash (Lukas Haas) have failed to gather the information they need from Saito (Ken Watanabe), who has turned around and promised to help Cobb return to the United States and clear his name if the team engages in a bit of Inception - placing a thought in someone's mind to make them do what you want. In this case, Saito wants his rival's company broken up by the founder's heir, Robert (Cillian Murphy).

Can Cobb and his team succeed?

Inception is a movie many have been hoping and praying would be the most exciting and accomplished film of the summer, and it delivers. It's not that often a movie can live up to the hype, but this one does because it is action packed, has a great story, is visually stunning as we see these dream-like worlds come to life, and even features a tortured love story that adds to the movie's greatness instead of making you groan. This is what movies can be like if you try.

Writer/director Christopher Nolan makes Inception complicated in all of the right ways. As Cobb and his team dive deeper and deeper into Robert's mind, the scheme becomes more detailed, and the audience realizes they must pay attention, which is a welcome relief from all of those predictable films we have been subject to.

Best of all, Nolan proves he is a writer and director who knows how to make a movie grow. It continues to build and build and build. Like Nolan's The Dark Knight or his Memento, it's non-stop building instead of being non-stop action. He adds layer upon layer in every scene as we watch this world develop in front of us. We sense the growing danger, the increasing intensity, and the anguish Cobb feels.

Sure, DiCpario is known for his intensity and those Pacino/DeNiro-esque explosions, but he also brings subtlety and pain to Cobb. Because of him, that love story feels like it belongs.

Meanwhile, Ellen Page gets to be a grown up in a grown up movie, proving she can be around the business for a long time, while Watanabe is so very cool as the corporate leader who is mysterious, dangerous, and makes the audience question where Saito is coming from and if he can be trusted.

After all of that, Inception has one of the best final scenes in years. It's daring and sure to cause all sorts of debate.

Anyone with me when I hope Nolan considers DiCaprio to play The Riddler in the next Batman movie?

Inception is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action throughout.