DVD OF THE WEEK

INCEPTION *****
Dir: Christopher Nolan. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy

Christopher Nolan has really staked his claim to being the thinking person's action director. After the Batman films and the more cerebral The Prestige, Inception is his most ambitious film yet and he pulls it off with great style.
Most interested folk will know the basic set-up: that people can enter dreams and then steal information from your subconscious. ‘Inception' is where they enter your dreams and, rather than extracting something, plant an idea, which will affect your behaviour after you wake. The landscape of these dreams, the way they look, is designed by an ‘architect', and the dreamer will try and react against perceived falseness by sending ‘projections' to attack the intruder in the dream.
Where it gets really tricky is that you can have a dream within a dream or, as here, a dream within a dream within a dream. Things get complicated.
Inception has been criticised for being too smart and letting its intellectual pretensions get in the way of the emotional story arc, which involves Leo DiCaprio's character being haunted by the death of his wife. That may be valid, but a second viewing – and the film does deepen significantly on rewatching, when you're not just trying to work out what the hell's going on – shows how the psychological story truly underpins everything.
This is a stunning film. A host of classy actors (to the above add Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe and Ellen Page), spectacular action, a genuine brain-twister of a plot, and – most importantly – a story that is genuinely original, something you've never seen before. In this age of sequels and remakes it's a stunning achievement.

In Animal Kingdom (****) 17 year old Joshua's mother dies of a heroin overdose and he goes to live with her criminal family, uncles and friends who are armed robbers and drug dealers. When simmering tension with the police (who are at least as crooked and violent as the crims) escalates to murder, Joshua finds himself in the middle of a war of attrition, uncertain of which side to chose. With Underbelly we've seen plenty of Aussie crime on screen and this is up with the best of them, sombre in tone and benefiting from an outstanding psycho turn by Ben Mendelsohn.

Another day another zombie movie. Which was the last thing I wanted, but Aah! Zombies!! (***) looked different and indeed it is. You wouldn't have thought there was much new to explore in the zombie genre: it has been done as straight horror, comedy and even musicals. But this time we get the dawn of the dead from the zombie perspective, which sounds absurd but actually works surprisingly well as four friends are bitten and become undead, while failing to realise what has happened to them. Hard to explain really, but well worthwhile, with a very original approach and not a few laughs along the way.

In the 2010 battle of the animated sequels, Toy Story 3 was the clear winner. It told a new story and pushed boundaries with class. The Shrek franchise, on the other hand, seemed to run out of stream after the second instalment and Shrek Ever After (***) mines familiar territory, relying on the audience's intrinsic affection for the characters in lieu of much that is actually funny. The story this time sees Shrek thrown into a parallel world via an evil Rumplestiltskin plot. There are the usual pop culture gags and Antonio Banderas' Puss in Boots is still fun, but the original magic seems in short supply.

Triangle (***) is a supernatural thriller that, thanks to a pile of misdirection, comes across as much more original than it ultimately is. Which isn't to knock it too much, as the film is inventive and well made, and certainly keeps you guessing. It stars Melissa George, who joins four friends on a yacht cruise which quickly descends into chaos after the arrival of a huge freak storm and the discovery of an apparently abandoned cruise liner. To say more would probably spoil things. Worth a look.