Inception

When did Leonardo DiCaprio grow a vertical line in his brow?   In Inception, he plays Cobb, an expert at prompting other people's dreams to be available to him so that he might steal what secrets lie therein.  Cobb has a lot to worry about since his wife in the dream state keeps trying to murder him or get back at him or get him back.   His new mission is to go into a man's dreams and plant an idea there, an idea that will benefit a corporate client mightily.  It will be necessary to outwit or outshoot the security police who guard the dreamer's dreams.  There is also the risk of landing in limbo if after the third level of dreaming you get stuck between levels one and two.

Besides learning how the invasion and creation and manipulation and suspension of dreams work, the viewer is treated to hair raising action scenes, one piled on top of the other.   It is hard to keep from admiring the visual mastery of the dream sequences mixed in with these action scenes.

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the part of Arthur, one of the team of experts who help Cobb on his missions.   He is supposed to lack imagination but he walks on the ceiling with ease.  I can't wait to see Gordon Levitt's next movie, not that he outshines anyone else in a cast that includes Tom Hardy as the shape shifter, Michael Caine as a concerned father, Ellen Page as a wizardly architect and Cillian Murphy as a very well protected victim.  

Next day, remembering the scenes of the architecture breaking up and going sideways, and of the mazes the dream architect invented, and of the van falling off the bridge for what seemed like days, I hoped that my dreams would become a bit richer in visual content. But poor Leonardo.  He has lost his boyish look. The groove in his forehead is there to stay.