powerhour24
ONE love, blood, life
Yeah, the children not aging throughout the whole thing bothered me a bit as well.
I didn't find it ambiguous. Nolan held that shot just long enough to make you feel unsettled, but I don't think it was truly meant to be open-ended.
"In the opening moments you get a glimpse of Leo's hand. Specifically, he's wearing his wedding ring. Now, if you follow the rest of the movie keeping an eye out for this you will notice that he only has the ring on when he's in the dream world. At the end of the movie he isn't wearing the ring." If the ring only appears when he's in a dream and he's not wearing at the end of the film, that could be confirmation that in fact, the top does stop spinning after the credits and Cobb is at last in the real world."
The fact that he actually gets to see the kids' faces (regardless of age and attire) and the noticeable faltering of the top are enough to convince me it wasn't a dream. That wedding ring deal is just the icing on the cake.
It's been pointed out that the kids look exactly like they have in his dreams, but I'd argue that (a) it's not stated how long he's been away from them, and that (b) we could be seeing them from his subjective standpoint, which I don't think is a cheat at all.
Is Lance seeing this over the weekend?
It was not quite what I expected, after skimming some initial reactions/reviews, but I quite enjoyed it.
Obviously, things like this are subjective but I don't really understand anyone finding the aforementioned stretch boring, now or upon subsequent viewings. I found myself enjoying it more and more, and was openly grinning at one point just due to the sheer balancing act of it all.
I thought there wasn't a weak performance in the bunch, but, I did feel like Page was a little out of her league here. She wasn't grating as she usually is, but she just doesn't have the chops to hang with some of the actors she was on screen with. Didn't hurt the film for me, just kind of an obvious circumstance. Marion Cotillard's English, thankfully, keeps improving. She's a notch up from Page, and, apropos of nothing I'll say that she is disarmingly and distractingly gorgeous.
Also, it's interesting to see Leo kind of shed, and I mean this from a physical perspective, whatever is left of his youthfulness. I'm a big fan of his and have been for a while but he always seemed almost too youthful for some of his roles, but I think that's done between this and Shutter Island.
Hardy, as you said, Laz, was fantastic, but there's another cat I've liked in the few things I've seen him in so this was not surprising. There was more Ken Watanabe than I expected, and less Caine, but that was fine.
So, anyway, yeah, I really liked it, but as I was telling your son it was a can't miss for me. I like Nolan a lot, I like the cast, I like explorations of the mind, even as done by Hollywood, and I fucking LOVE heist films so, really, this was in my wheelhouse. Toss in that balancing act that kept raising the stakes and the tension and you've entertained the shit out of me for 2.5 hours.
Looking forward to seeing it again.
Is this probably the worst possible time to reiterate how much I adore The Matrix Reloaded?
Probably.
Carry on.