Lonesome Lizard – Review: Rango

With March comes the first legitimate, widely released, non-guilty pleasure film of the year, Rango. Early on, the trailer for the animated feature, directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Johnny Depp, promised a movie that would be interesting, quirky, and fun. The film fulfills that promise.

The Trouble with Quibbles: Inception

I must preface this quibble with two warnings: 1) This film is far too dense to truly quibble about in one go, so I’m sure there are things we’ve left out, gleaned over, or touched on far too briefly, which might lead to the first multi-part quibble. We’ll see. 2) There be yon spoilers, but not for a bit. So, even if you haven’t seen Inception, you can read on, to a point. I’ll warn you again when we get to spoiler territory. Seriously though, you should go see this film… a sci-fi thriller from the acclaimed director of The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and Memento… what more do you need?

With Inception, Christopher Nolan offers a cinematic breath of fresh air in a summer blockbuster season chock full o’ watered-down remakes, superfluous video games adaptations, bedazzled vampires, and formulaic tent-pole franchises. Nolan’s mind-bending thriller is a wonderfully original blend of action and intrigue. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team of dream extractors, composed of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, and Dileep Rao, are presented with an even more challenging task than their typical dream extraction, planting an idea deep enough within a subjects subconscious that it redefines them.