"You're waiting for a train; a train that will take you far away..."

Inception begins with Leonardo Di Caprio washing up on a beach. He wakes to see two fair-haired children playing in the sand. He is found by some armed men speaking Japanese. These men take him to a wizened old man who asks him if he's there to kill him. The guards display the only thing's Di Caprio was carrying: a gun and a toy top. The old man recognizes the top and starts to spin it... It is not until the very end that a first-time viewer will understand what this really means, an early example of all the complexities Inception holds.

There are so many things this movie gets right, I can only see it becoming one of the Great Movies, one that collectively sticks with us, becoming a part of our cultural make-up and that we always return to. It's a cerebral action movie that's brainy but not pretentious. One aspect of it that many seem to overlook is that it's premise is essentially a reverse heist-picture, where the group has to break in and leave something of great value. It's also a perfect example of using visuals to help enhance the story, not to over-compensate for a shoddy script. The characters are not completely fleshed out, but the actors are so compelling that their subtle character traits and flaws speak volumes. Di Caprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy are as excellent as one can expect from them, but Joseph Gordan-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Marion Cotillard are the ones whose performances you remember.

It's a complex storyline, and it's ambiguous (oh, that brilliant final scene!), but not in a purposefully frustrating way a la David Lynch. I'm really excited about all of the theories that are emerging around this film. Many of them are going to be crack-pot ideas, but I've already heard some pretty cool ones: it's all a dream, all of it, from the very beginning, and Mal was right all along; or that it's all a metaphor for film making, Christopher Nolan's 8 1/2.

That said, the film can be left as it is on the surface, and really whether it's an excellent summer blockbuster or an art film, it succeeds as both. Unless something else trumps this, I'm going to call it the quintessential movie of 2010.