Inception | A

Dreams seem like random stories told through your own personal viewing glass, only to be forgotten about a few hours after waking up. But what if everything we know was shaken to its core?

Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, a man who can enter dreams, focuses on these and other different ways of looking at anyone's dreams. In the world of Inception, everyone regards dreams in the same way we do, never really thinking anything beyond what we perceive to be the truth — nobody is the wiser.

This idea of dreams as a form of reality helps the audience to identify with the characters and the storyline. After all, for all we know, the universe invented by director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento) where the military has invented a program to invade dreams and plant ideas exists this very moment but you'd never know. This world is fairly similar to our own. It could be going on right now.

Thanks to Nolan's innovative storytelling as well as brilliant breakaway performances by Ellen Page (Juno) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (10 Things I Hate About You, (500) Days of Summer), what appears to just be a story comes to life on the screen. Though the idea of the characters going deeper and deeper into dreams may cause some viewers to lose track after awhile, the plot, simply due to its ambiguous nature, is causing people to perpetually analyze and reanalyze this movie. Online debates about this movie can be found on websites comparable to those solely dedicated to the analysis of the television show Lost. The film's concept seems completely out there, but it's told in just a believable-enough fashion that you honestly feel it could occur in some world.

The visuals, although they are de-emphasized as the movie goes on, are also fantastic. Nolan combines an actual plot with action elements such as explosions and visual distortions. The fight scenes, combined with a brilliant concept and an interesting plot, really get your mind moving.

The ending is ambiguous to say the least, and possibly renders the whole movie moot, but because of this, it is possible to go back and completely reanalyze everything in the film, taking it from a million different perspectives.

Inceptioncan mean anything to anyone. It can be a standard action popcorn flick. It can be a plot-driven movie with countless plot twists. It can be a film filled with fantastic visuals and superb acting. But no matter how you view Inception, one thing can be agreed upon: Nolan's struck gold again.