Inception (no proper spoilers)

When I say no spoilers, if you read on, you may read something that makes the film less enjoyable, but there are no plot giveaways.

I don't get to the cinema often these days. I'd not heard of Inception until last week, when it was decided that I should take my twelve year old son to the cinema. He wanted to see it, it looked above average and so we went.

I think it was the first film we've seen together at the cinema that wasn't a kids film. We enjoyed it, we talked about it on the drive home. I thought the end of the final scene, just before the credits, was great.It made for a nice few hours of quality father-son time.

Two things distracted me. A phone rang. I was drawn out of the film, back to the theatre, frowning in the direction of the offending sound. But it was in the film, not in the audience. I've no idea how film-makers are going to deal with that problem.

The second distraction was Marion Cotillard, who plays DiCaprio's wife. She's simply ridiculously, compellingly, extraordinarily beautiful in this film. Whenever she was on screen, I simply forgot about the film.

So, decent enough film. Gets the brain working a bit, but it's not difficult to follow if you take Kermode's advice and don't go to the loo. My son loved it. It looked stunning.

This week, I've had the luxury of being able to read some of the criticism of it. I could argue that they should get off their high horses and enjoy it for what it is, but they all seem to have a point: There's way, way too much exposition. I can't see how they'd strip out all of it, but it's a film that explains itself far too well and leaves the viewer with (almost) no questions.

I've not thought about the film this week beyond just one niggling technical question (to which I think I know the answer). If it had been made without explaining itself as it went along, I'd have been begging friends to see it so that we could talk it through and try to figure it out, argue theories.

It's not going to stand the test of time.