Tag Archives: Tom Hardy

Inside Inception’s Rotating Hallway Fight Scene

Last week, we took an in-depth look at Inception (click here to read), one of my favorite films of all-time, and timely since Inception’s director, Christopher Nolan, just turned in the best movie I’ve seen this year thus far in Dunkirk.  In my article, I mentioned Nolan’s preference for doing any kind of F/X practically rather than with CGI if it can be humanly done (even when it’s flipping a tractor trailer in The Dark Knight).  CineFix, who should be paying me to hype them at this point, doesn’t just make great movie lists, it also has a feature called “The Art of the Scene” where they dissect an amazing scene, show you how it was done and why it works in the film.  I almost included this behind-the-scenes piece in my article, but it’s a fascinating look at the rotating hallway fight from Inception.  Whereas most directors would have inserted the actors into a CGI environment, Nolan went a very different route.  It’s a fascinating look at an amazing scene.


This fight uses no CGI other than to remove the wires Joseph Gordon Levitt and the other actors are wearing.  A full-scale hallway was built and then put on a giant gimbal which rotated the room.  The fight takes place in a critical moment in the final job, when the van that’s carrying the team around has gone off a bridge, creating a zero-G effect that ripples down the various levels of the dreamworld you see in the map.  For Arthur (Levitt), who is in the shallowest level, he loses gravity entirely and the result is an amazing fight scene, made all the more amazing when you know how Nolan and Pfister shot it.


Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception

Charlize Theron’s 10 Best Movies

Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron is the queen of action right now in Hollywood, which isn’t a bad title to attain after 20 years playing mostly deeply serious character roles.  Theron, who is originally from South Africa, doesn’t have as deep a resume as some of the actresses from her generation, but it’s not lack of talent that prevents her, more a tendency to take on misguided “message” projects that fall flat.  Additionally, if you look for Monster among her 10 Best, you won’t find it as it is one of the few films in my life I’ve walked out of because I found it so deeply unpleasant.  Doesn’t mean that she wasn’t outstanding in her acting; just means that there’s only so much hooker/serial killer I can take (and from the eventual director of Wonder Woman….who knew?).  She’s on a serious career upswing in the wake of stealing Mad Max: Fury Road (where’s our Furiosa spin-off?) and re-establishing her action dominance in Atomic Blonde.  She looks 20 years younger than her actual age, and can beat you up, so it’s unlikely this actress is going to fall prey to the gender wall that eats so many careers.  I’d like to see her do more comedy though.  She has great timing, and that’s something you can’t teach.

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Top 5: Scenes from Inception (IMDB Top 250 #14)

Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, and Ken Watanabe in InceptionEvery other month, we take a look at a movie from the Internet Movie Database’s List of the TOP 250 FILMS OF ALL-TIME.  These are movies that transcend a simple “My Favorite Scene” column.  These are movies that are hard to just pry five gems from, but we do and examine the film overall.  We’re on our fourteenth installment in this series.  Click on the link here to check out previous installments from #1 The Shawshank Redemption to #13 Forrest Gump.

Joseph Gordon Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception

Inception is our fourteenth installment in this series, and what a perfect example of a film you simply cannot highlight in one scene.  When Alfred Hitchcock was gone, everyone asked who would be the next Hitchcock.  When Steven Spielberg lost his touch, people began asking who was the next Spielberg.  Christopher Nolan isn’t the next anything.  In an age when cinema has become largely cookie cutter, Nolan has risen to become film’s best director, and in 40 years people will be asking who the next Nolan will be.  Inception is, in my opinion, Nolan’s best film, and a film so original and yet filled with so many classic elements of different genres that Nolan was able to make his dense script a hook audiences were willing to push themselves to understand.  Combined with dazzling visuals, an amazing ensemble, Wally Pfister’s cinematography masterpiece, and a score from Hans Zimmer for the ages and you have one of the best films of the 21st Century. Continue reading Top 5: Scenes from Inception (IMDB Top 250 #14)

Tom Hardy’s 10 Best Movies

Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy has, for an actor only 15 or so years into his career, put together a top 10 list of projects that would be the lifetime envy of most.  Rarely the leading man, Hardy seems most comfortable in a high-class ensemble where he can build indelible characters that steal movies.  Even before he became part of the “Nolan Troupe”, joining the director for Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, and Dunkirk, Hardy was firmly established as a consummate character actor.  Even in films like Mad Max: Fury Road, in which he’s the title character, he was content to let Charlize Theron’s Furiosa steal the movie while he provided the constant and the result was the Academy actually nominated a cool movie for Best Picture.  Hardy is one of many actors that had their first high-profile role in Band of Brothers (one of the five best things ever to air on TV) along with James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and others.  Hardy doesn’t stick just to films, having returned to TV for the massively underrated Peaky Blinders and beginning his own starring vehicle in FX’s Taboo.  He’s a chameleon (compare skinny Band of Brothers Hardy with Bane), but at the core of all of his characters is a fierce anger that sometimes burns hot or cold, but it’s always an asset to whatever project he’s undertaking.


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Movie Review: Dunkirk (2017) *Another Nolan Masterpiece*

Dunkirk

Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s 10th film.  In 10 films, Nolan has already put together a body of work that marks him as the best director of his generation, but he’s still getting better.  The Miracle at Dunkirk is one of the most important moments of World War II and Nolan immerses you in it in a complete sensory experience.  He combines staggering IMAX cinematography, lightning-fast editing, multiple perspectives, and a score designed to make you as tense as the soldiers on the beach to produce a film that still feels like a Nolan film, but is also the best war film made since Saving Private Ryan and 2017’s best film to date. Continue reading Movie Review: Dunkirk (2017) *Another Nolan Masterpiece*