19/50: The Prestige

What do you think you would do to become the absolute best at your craft? Would you steal? Would you go to jail? Would you, possibly, kill?

That is just one of the many ethical questions being asked in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. Which, despite being very good, may be my least favorite of Nolan's film that I have seen.

Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) are each part of a magician's show - as they each try to become magicians themselves. Angier's wife, Julia (Piper Perabo), is the magician's assistant, who gets lowered into a bucket of water and releases herself.

Borden believes that the show could be better, and despite being told not to, ties Julia up in a different way - which ends up not allowing her to escape, and she is killed.

This is the start of the dismantling of Bordern's and Angier's friendship. Borden is quite possibly one of the best magicians, but his stage presence is lacking. Angier, however, has a ton of stage presence, but doesn't have the tricks that Borden is able to come up with.

Angier begins to obsess over becoming the best and beating Borden, especially have seeing one of the most amazing tricks he has ever seen - Borden's 'The Transported Man'. In order to figure out how he does it, Angier sends his stage assistant, Olivia (Scarlet Johansson), to become Borden's assistant and steal his secrets.

Like most of Nolan's films, you really have to pay attention. There is a lot going on in this film and just like Angier with Borden's diary, we have to try and figure out what is going on. Angier feels that being the best magician is the most important to him - even more important than the one's that love him.

Nolan really gets great performances out of his actors - Bale and Michael Caine continue to be his go-to guys and they perform great in this. Jackman also stands out, and you can see just how obsessed he has become to dethrown Bale's character.

Much like the Pixar films, Nolan has really begun to out do himself. It is hard to move The Prestige passed his newer films like Batman Begins, Dark Knight, Inception and even Memento. Although I would need to watch Memento again from what I remember I think it would still be ahead of this film.

That doesn't mean this is horrible, far from it, just that Nolan's lesser films still standout against most other films that are out there.

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4/50: Inception

There is nothing like a good mind f@#k in the morning. And that is exactly what Inception was able to do for me.

I had heard the praise. I had read the reviews, but I did my best to stay away from any possible spoilers. I still didn't think it would be as good as it was. It may have even surpassed The Dark Knight as Christopher Nolan's best film.

So, let me try and explain a little bit about what story Nolan is portraying. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are both able to move around inside other people's dreams. They are so good, in fact, that they are even - technically - thieves inside these dreams.

Cobb is a fugitive of the United States and really wants to return home to his two children. He is approached by a business man, Saito (Ken Watanabe), that promises him a safe return home if he can pull off something that is thought to be impossible - inception.

Saito wants his business rivals' son, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to break apart the company once his father has passed away. The only way to do that is to go deep into Fischer's dreams and plant this idea so that he believes he has thought of it himself.

The way this is done is so crazy and imaginative that I won't even type about it - just go see the movie. I will only mention that the rest of Cobb and Arthur's team consists of Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao). Ariadne is the 'architect' who puts together the world inside the dreams - which again you need to see.

DiCaprio was incredible in his role as Cobb and once again I was blown away by Joseph Gordon-Levitt - he just continues to be one of the best young actors in Hollywood. It is sort of funny how in this film you end up truly rooting for the bad guys - it takes a great story and casting for that to work as well as it did.

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