SPOILERS and NO SCRIPT LINKS below.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a single idea within one’s mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset.
About: Risking what might be the biggest payout for a director behind Cameron, Lucas, and Jackson, by passing up a direct-into-production follow-up to The Dark Knight, Nolan took advantage of maybe the only opportunity he’ll ever have to make a no-expenses-spared version of this script.
Writer: Christopher Nolan

Okay, this is going to be a blog entry in the truest sense because I’m writing it stream-of-conscious. This will result in a disjointed and herky-jerky review but if there’s any movie review that benefits from such a style, it’s this one.

I didn’t know anything about Inception going in except for a glimpse of the city folding up on itself and that it was something about dreams. So I really had no idea what to expect.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Inception cannot be summarized by a line, paragraph, or even a review. It’s a weird multi-layered journey into a constantly-changing dreamland. To be honest, I’m not even sure if it works. It’s so bizarre, it’s so ambitious, that the film requires multiple-viewings to sort it all out. But as far as what I experienced in this single viewing, these are my thoughts.

A quick breakdown of the plot: Cobb and his team are guns for hire that break into people’s dreams and steal information from them (secret documents, money, whatever the client needs) that these people otherwise wouldn’t reveal in real life. Cobb is recruited by a man named Saito, who owns the second biggest energy company in the world. Saito is worried that his biggest competitor is about to squeeze him out of business. It just so happens that the owner of this competitor is dying, and that his son, Robert Fischer Jr., will be taking over. Saito wants to implant information into Fischer to prevent him from continuing his father’s plans. This is known as an “inception,” — the hardest kind of dream altering there is.

That’s really barebones but my head will explode if I try and explain more. First let’s get to the bad. And I’m just going to come out and say it. The wife storyline was fucking stupid. Every time we went back to Marian Coutillard, the movie grinded to a screeching halt. I appreciate what Nolan was trying to do. I understand how much deeper it made DiCaprio’s character. I understand how it complicated the plot and kept the dreamworld uncertain. But it was a colossal failure. We just kept repeating the saaaaame things over and over again. She wants him to come with her into the dreamworld. WE GET IT! Ironically, the more they repeat this, the more confusing it gets, and by the end I didn’t know if he had a wife, had children, if he was in a dream or not or what the hell she had to do with the story in any capacity.

The funny thing is that the core of this idea is cool and could’ve worked. She’s almost like the bad guy in the beginning, jumping into his dreams and fucking everything up for him. A character like that with dream-like powers/abilities…I mean the possibilities are endless. Yet she’s relegated to whining her ass off the whole second half of the film, asking DiCaprio for the 800th time if he’ll stay with her. Ugh.

Second problem, the exposition. This film IS exposition. Every scene has it. A dozen scenes are practically dedicated to it. And there’s so much to remember that we should’ve been given notepads on our way into the theater. Now a lot of the exposition is fun, because it’s telling us about how the dreamworld and the extraction process works, but Nolan’s so smart and so careful, that he wants to make sure you don’t say, “Yeah but, what if this happens?” So he makes sure to answer every single question the audience might have about the process so as to plug up every single hole. So yes, it makes sense in the end, but at what cost? Characters doling out 3 to 4 page monologues? Is that worth it?

But outside of those two things, I thought the rest was pretty much awesome. There were times when I had trouble keeping up, but once I understood the world and understood what they were trying to do, I really dug it.

I loved the dream within a dream within a dream within a dream (yes, four of them!) plan. I loved how each individual dream had its own point, its own goal (Indian guy had to avoid the bad guys in van dream, Gordon-Levitt had to protect them in the hotel dream, and then all hell broke loose and multiple people needed to be protected/extracted in the third dream). I loved all the Gordon-Levitt stuff in the hotel when he was bouncing around walls and wrapping people up to prepare for the “kick.” I didn’t like Gordon-Levitt before this. Dude just made me the president of his fan club.

I loved the coordinated triple kick where they had to be falling in each successive dream at the perfect time. I loved how the deeper you go into the dream tree, the more time you have, and how Nolan showed that with the slow-motion van falling (for those who haven’t seen it – the van falls for 10 seconds, but in a dream within a dream within a dream reality, that’s like a week). We have some fun with ticking time bombs on this site. This is a ticking time bomb fucking frenzy! There’s ticking time bombs on four different levels. It’s totally wild.

The only dream scenario I didn’t dig was the whole Russian ski-patrol blizzard base. Did Cillian Murphy’s character watch a lot of Roger Moore James Bond films as a child? This was the only part that felt out of place.

From a structural standpoint, the basics are all taken care of. We have a solid ultimate goal: implant the inception into Cillian’s character’s mind so that Saito retains control over the energy business. We have a great motivation for the main character. If he succeeds, he gets to go back to America to be with his children. And even though it takes us awhile to get to that story, Nolan uses a series of sequences to keep the audience focused in the meantime: Find an architect, get the architect back after she refuses, train the architect, find a chemist, find the mind expert (Eames), train and prepare the team for the inception. Late-starting stories are always a gamble, especially on the page, but if you have goal-oriented sequences to keep us focused til we get there, it can work.

There were some minor quibbles. Ken Wantanabe is the man with the power to get Dicaprio back to his children. So when he goes down in the dream world and is dying, why is everyone so casual about it? This guy is THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN THERE.

I’m still not sure why DiCaprio had to go into the fourth-level down dream. To get his wife? What did his wife have to do with this mission? That part felt so forced.

And also, when you have the ability to literally do anything and show anything because of the warped physics and personality of the dreamworld, shouldn’t you show us more than a weird decaying city in the background for the finale? The big money special effects shots were wasted on bullshit exposition scenes like when he tricks Ellen Paige at the cafe and has everything blow up. Why aren’t we saving those effects and doing ten times crazier things in the ending?

Overall, this is really complicated film and one I’ll be wrapping my head around for awhile. I might see it again in the theater (which is rare for me) so that says something. It does leave you with a *feeling*. It’s hard to describe but it definitely affects you in ways normal movies do not. I’d put this as my second favorite film of the year behind Toy Story 3. It’s weird and different and worth the ride if you’re even the slightest bit interested.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] Wasn’t for me.
[ ] Worth the matinee.
[x] Worth a regular-priced ticket.
[ ] Impressive
[ ] Genius

What I learned: If your main story goal starts late, make sure you’ve lined up a series of compelling “mini-stories” to keep us interested in the meantime. The goal here is the inception of Cillian Murphy’ character. But that doesn’t start until 50-60 pages into the script. So essentially, the first half (or third) of the script is dedicated to putting a team together so they can perform this task. That portion is broken down into smaller mini-stories, like I listed above, that have simple goals for the protagonist to perform (find this person, build the dream world, set up the kidnapping). As long as your characters are going after a strong and immediate goal, your audience won’t notice that the central plot hasn’t started yet.

I know I know, this is wrong of me. After promising my Facebook and Twitter friends that I’d be reviewing a new Top 25 script this Friday, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been waiting a year and a half for Inception now, ever since my pretend April Fool’s review of the script back in April of 2009. For that reason, I’m going to be reviewing Inception the film (not the script) on Friday afternoon, and that will stand in as my Friday script review. There will be anger, there will be outrage, but by golly, there will be INCEPTION.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: The 12 hours leading up to a corporate investment firm’s downfall.
About: Shooting in New York City right now, this film stars Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, and Stanley Tucci (talk about a cast!). Not much is known about the writer-director, JC Chandor, who, along with his producers, were able to secure funding for the film during the Cannes Film Festival. Before this, Chandor completed one short film and worked in the sound department on another. Welcome to what happens when you write a great script!
Writer: JC Chandor
Details: 92 pages – July 13, 2009 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Quinto plays Peter

Now this.

Is how.

You write.

A script.

Hit us hard at the opening bell and keep on punching.

Margin Call is a script that takes the financial crisis and actually DOES something with it. We’ve seen other writers take a crack at this subject matter, like Allan Loeb with Money Never Sleeps (Wall Street 2) and John Wells with The Company Men. But while both those scripts had nice moments, this proves that with a little ingenuity and good storytelling, David can top Goliath.

This is a movie about money. About what happens when you’re in charge of all the money in the world. About being dependent on that money. It’s about greed. It’s about realizing that no matter how smart you are, sooner or later someone smarter is going to come along and break up your party.

When that happens, what are you left with? Who are you without your money? Who are you without your “things?” We never see ANY of this in Margin Call. But we can see it in every one of the characters’ eyes as they assess the way their world’s going to change tomorrow.

Peter Sullivan is a 27 year old risk assessment analyst, which is gobbledy gook for “good with numbers.” Peter works at one of those giant investment firms you see Jim Cramer screaming about on that weird Seasame Street-inspired show of his on MSNBC. I don’t know a lot about trading but I know that when you trade billions of dollars a day, the decisions you make affect every person in America.

The script starts out with a brilliant bang as human resources systematically weaves through the trading floor like stormtroopers, tapping traders on the shoulder and letting them know that their services are no longer needed. Stinking rich one second. Checking pizza delivery jobs the next. When the slaughter is over, only 30% of the company remains. Sam Rogers, the elder statesman of the company, gives what will soon be compared to the Alec Baldwin speech in Glengarry Glen Ross. He tells them that they are survivors, and that he’ll need every one of them to save this company.

Unfortunately Peter’s boss, the eternally stressed-out Eric, didn’t make the cut. And when he’s leaving, he hands Eric a jump drive. Something he’s been working on. “Check it,” he says, with eyes that imply a hell of a lot more.

Peter does. And what he finds horrifies him.

The drive contains an analysis of the firm’s financial model – the equation they use to buy and trade everything in the company. I’ll spare you the details because I don’t know what I’m talking about but basically, the model is faulty, and if the company doesn’t sell everything they have by the end of tomorrow, there’s a good chance they’ll lose 1 trillion dollars. Not billion. Trill-eee-yan. If that happens, every single person who works in this firm will never work anywhere again.

There are lots of cool threads in Margin Call but the story comes down to a bunch of guys trying to figure out what to do. They have a doozy of a problem here. If they sell everything in a day, knowing it’s all bad, no firm will ever trade with them again. But if they try to sneak their way out of it over time, there’s a good chance the model will fail and both the government and the American people will no longer trust them. Damned if they do. Fucked if they don’t.

This is what makes good drama. You put your characters in a high stakes dilemma and you make them choose. Choice reveals character, just like real life. Think about it. When do you really find out about people? You find out about them during times of adversity. You find out about them when shit goes wrong and decisions need to be made. Some wilt, others rise. But those are always the moments that reveal who a person really is. And movies are no different. Put your character in a difficult situation where they have to make a choice and the audience will watch with baited breath. I promise you.

I liked so much about this script. I liked how we went up the chain of command to deal with the problem. We start with the Nemo-sized fish and work our way, one boss at a time, to the whale.

I loved that it was a simple story, but how much bigger it felt despite that. I mean this is basically a bunch of people in suits talking. That’s it. You or I could shoot this tomorrow. But the context – with all the money and the firm – gave it the illusion of being much bigger. Very clever.

I loved the detail put into all the characters (making Peter a former rocket scientist was a nice touch). I loved the way the script built up to the final decision. I loved the disappearance of Eric (the guy found the glitch) and the escalating dilemma about what to do with him if they find him (there’s a great ambiguous ending to this that has you wondering what indeed happened to Eric). And yes, I loved the ticking time bomb of having to figure everything out by morning.

But like all good scripts, it comes back to the characters, and all the characters here rock. Each one is fully invested in the problem, so there’s never any of those wasted scenes where we’re sitting with two characters going, “Who the hell cares? Get to the people that matter!” Everybody here matters.

Chandor could’ve pushed the envelope in a few places and really shocked us, but his restraint is what ends up making this such an authentic ride. I don’t know how long Chandor’s been writing but this was good page. Good page.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Each character has a lot at stake here (mainly their job, but also their future and their standing inside the company). This is why Chandor was able to nab such a great cast. When characters have something at stake, they’re alive. We CARE about what they want to do because what they want to do MATTERS. When they have nothing at stake, they just sit there. You can dress up a character in crazy antics, hilarious dialogue, and as much weirdness as you want, but unless they have a stake in the story, in the ultimate goal, they’re not going to be interesting, and they won’t be appealing to actors. Do all the characters in your script have something at stake?

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A struggling entrepreneur takes his mother on a cross-country roadtrip to reunite with an old flame.
About: Dan Fogelman wrote “Cars,” “Bolt,” and the year’s biggest spec sale so far, the untitled Steve Carrel comedy which sold for 2 million dollars. Today’s script, “My Mother’s Curse,” was purchased by Paramount and landed on this year’s Black List with, I believe, 13 votes. Before Fogelman made the jump to features, he wrote on several failed TV series. Ann Fletcher (“The Proposal”) is set to direct and Seth Rogan and Barbara Streisand are rumored to star.
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Details: 112 pages – June 5, 2007 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I’ll just say it. I don’t think “parent-related” humor is funny. It’s why I never watched Everybody Loves Raymond, why the Seinfeld episodes I hated most were the ones with the parents, and why I never jumped on this “Shit My Dad Says” bandwagon. I don’t know why but I guess it’s because the humor is so…obvious. Oh, those wacky parents are saying the darndest things again. What will they say next??? The only parent-related movie I like is “Meet The Parents,” which I thought was one of the best executed comedies of the last ten years. The reason it passed the “parents” test was because the parents were in control instead of out of control, and that was a nice change. To prove my point, the franchise imploded the second they brought in Streisand and Hoffman for the sequel. Once it became “parents say the darndest things,” it was the same old “Everybody Loves Raymond” jokes catered for the big screen.

Anyway, Fogelman’s a really hot writer and I thought it was ridiculous that I still hadn’t read any of his work, so I saw that this made the Black List and wanted to check out what was under the hood.

My Mother’s Curse is a simple story (a welcome change from yesterday, huh?) about 29 year-old Andy Brewster, an entrepreneur with commitment issues. He lives in LA and has created a completely organic cleaning formula, like Fantastik, but so pure you can actually drink it. This is Andy’s big pitch. He cleans up some dirt, then downs a shot of the formula. It impresses everyone who sees it, but still hasn’t made him any sales.

Before Andy goes on a big cross-country pitch fest, he stops back home to check on his single mother, Joyce. Since his father died, Joyce has lost all ambition. Her days consist of watching TV and chugging M&Ms. The only joy she has left in life is Andy coming home to visit.

So after hearing about one of Jocye’s ex-flames, Andy googles him and finds out he lives in San Francisco. Playing the role of Cupid, he invites his mother along for his business trip, planning to secretly surprise her at the end with her ex. Sounds like a trip on the Crazy Train to me.

Andy and his mom get stuck in topless bars, eat a 72 ounce steak, have inappropriate conversations about Andy’s penis problems as a baby, and probably my favorite part, listen to a “books on tape” version of “Middlesex” as they drive, which has tons of uncomfortable sexually descriptive chapters. I know these types of scenes are par for the course in roadtrip comedies but Fogelman makes them fresh somehow. I think it’s because the characters, and specifically the relationship, feels so honest. It’s like we don’t need all the bells and whistles to distract us. The characters are working so it doesn’t matter where they are.

What’s the key to a good road trip script? Well, the good ones tend to have a strong goal. Wherever the characters are going, it needs to be really important to them. The audience isn’t going to care if our heroes only kind of want to get there. What’s unique about My Mother’s Curse is that only one of the characters knows the true goal of the journey. Joyce is out of the loop. This withheld information gives the story an added layer because on top of wondering what this guy’s going to say when they get there, we’re wondering how Joyce will react as well. Will she lash out at her son, embrace the moment, run away? This “why have one reaction when you can have two,” approach makes the endpoint twice as exciting.

The other thing I like to encourage on roadtrip script is having a ticking time bomb. If the characters need to be somewhere by a certain time, the script moves faster. If you remember the movie “Roadtrip,” for example, it’s about a college kid who has sex with a girl on tape, then accidentally sends that tape to his girlfriend back home. The ticking clock is he has to get back home and intercept the tape before it gets there. In the upcoming Zach Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr. film, “Due Date,” they have to get home before the baby is born. And in a less obvious example, the ticking time bomb in Little Miss Sunshine is the pageant.

Surprisingly, My Mother’s Curse doesn’t use a ticking time bomb, and I think it suffers a little for it. Had Andy found out that the ex was leaving on an extended business trip in three days, that could’ve infused the story with some immediacy. Maybe something happens to the car late in the trip with only 12 hours to go (not unlike the grandfather dying in Little Miss Sunshine) and the rush to get there in time gives that third act an extra kick in the ass.

But hey, I think Mr. Fogelman knows what he’s doing and probably has a good reason for nixing the hurry-up option. In fact, outside of a few minor issues, I thought this script was pretty awesome. The mother-son stuff is done with just the right mixture of comedy and emotion. I didn’t break down at the end or anything but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Nobody’s reinventing the wheel here but if you want to know how to execute an idea in screenplay form, you could learn a lot from this script. Good stuff. :)

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Good scripts have three central areas of conflict: external conflict, internal conflict, and inter-character conflict. So in My Mother’s Curse, the external conflict is Andy trying to sell his cleaning solution. The internal conflict is his inability to commit. And the inter-character conflict is Andy and Joyce’s different approach to life. A lot of writers get lost in the second act. Remember, this is what you should be using your second act for – to explore these three areas of conflict. If you don’t, you’ll have a bunch of lame boring characters, talking to each other with nothing to say.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) – A man travels to other planets and dimensions in search of his reincarnated lover.
About: Add Ion to the ever-expanding list of Channing Tatum projects, whose clout is now such that he’s able to sign onto movies as an actor AND producer (as he is here). Scott Free Productions and Fox 2000 purchased this script a couple of weeks ago, I’m guessing as a directing vehicle for Ridley or Tony. While this is Will Dunn’s first sale, I seem to remember him having a couple of scripts on previous Black Lists so this isn’t his first time to the dance. Channing Tatum, for better or worse, has been chosen as Hollywood’s go-to young brooding hunk. Some think he can’t act. Others, particularly women, don’t care. I thought he was good in the little seen but highly recommended “A Guide To Recognizing Our Saints.” Overall, we’ll have to wait to find out if he’s the next Matt Damon or the next Josh Hartnett.
Writer: Will Dunn
Details: 116 pages – April 1, 2009 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I wasn’t so much interested in the quality of this early Will Dunn draft (I knew it wasn’t the draft that sold) as much as I was interested in what the movie was about. I have a baffling habit of forgetting that IMDB can actually tell me the premise of a script ahead of time, so I end up reading scripts that I don’t necessarily need to read. But that’s fine. I love sci-fi and whenever a sci-fi scripts sells, I crave the where, the what, the why, and the how.

I don’t have any info about the where the why and the how, but I can tell you about the what. Or at least, I can *try* to tell you about the what. See, the first thing you’ll realize about Ion is that it’s kind of….confusing. I don’t do any drugs but I felt like I was on drugs when I read it. This isn’t the easiest story to follow by any means, so I’ll try and do the heavy-lifting for you.

Ion, the main character, is a “Scout.” He lives on a planet, presumably a version of earth (though that’s just a guess), with a species of humans that don’t age. Because these humans never die, they eventually wear out their worlds and need new ones, kinda like underwear. Ion has a unique ability to find these alter-Earths, so they send him out into parallel dimensions to locate these planets. As soon as he finds them, he sends a signal, which acts as an intergalactic lighthouse, and the rest of the Immortal Humans fly in and set up shop.

Channing Tatum – the star of the next 43 movies you’ll see.

However, after doing this for thousands, maybe even millions of years, Ion’s over it. He doesn’t want to see these reasonably untouched quasi-earths get ravaged and decimated over and over again. It’s not cool. On top of that, Ion is in love with a woman named Alice who lives on each of these planets. Or I should say a different version of Alice lives on each planet. Don’t worry, Ion’s not a player. He’s not collecting Alices or anything unscrupulous like that. It’s just that the damn leader of the Immortal Humans, Azrayl, keeps killing every Alice Ion falls in love with (I have to admit, I’m not sure why), forcing him to keep finding her over and over again.

Anyway, so our story begins when Ion destroys the current signal transmitter and crash-lands on our planet back in 1947. He’s captured by the military (and yes, it is the event you’re thinking of) and held prisoner for 60 years while they study him. In the meantime, Ion remote-views the planet (traveling across earth with your mind) to find Alice — or I should say, this earth’s version of Alice, who’s named “Amara,” — so he can be with her.

During the story, we’re also flashing back thousands if not millions of years ago, to, I believe, the first time Ion and Alice found each other. This is used to show how badly they’re in love, contrasted with the present day, where the new Alice doesn’t even know who Ion is.

Is there anyone who looks more like a director than this guy?

It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s wrong here. There’s too many exceptional things going on at once. We’re traveling to other dimensions, we’re flashing back to another world millions of years ago, we’re jumping through multiple decades here on earth, we’re remote viewing other places on the planet, and we’re engaging in a relationship with a woman completely different from the one Ion is supposedly in love with.

Obviously, it’s hard to enjoy a story if you don’t know what’s going on, and most of the time I didn’t. I needed to remind myself that early drafts for complicated scripts like Ion are often an exercise in jumbleality, and that a lot of the confusion gets fixed in rewrites, but man this tested every fiber of concentration I had because there was nothing to ground any of the story. It was so all over the place.

Are we finally getting another 2001? Or will we get another “The Fountain?”

It’s my guess — and a wild one at that –that this is Ridley Scott’s edgy answer to Cameron’s Avatar. And if you pressed me to come up with one of those Hollywood pitches, I’d probably describe it as – Are you ready for this? – “Avatar meets 2001.” As crazy as that sounds, I think it’s a pretty accurate representation of the material. Dunn has a wonderful talent for description, as well as an innate ability to evoke emotion. This script drips – and I mean you can feel the drops on your arms – with feelings of loss, emptiness, and fear. And I get the sense that that’s what Ridley latched onto, and why he gave this script a shot.

But you guys know me. I need my scripts to make sense. I need at least some aspect of the story to fit inside the confines of normalcy. Ion reads like a science fiction poem from someone losing their mind. While that may be its biggest strength, it’s also its biggest weakness, and that left me with more questions than answers. I can’t recommend something I don’t understand, so I have to say, with some sadness, that Ion falls short.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Think of the reader as a cup and every complicated thing you want that reader to remember is added to that cup. Traveling to other earths in different dimensions? That’s a few ounces. A subplot that evolves via a 1000-year flashback? That’s a few ounces as well. A female lead who changes depending on what planet she’s on? Another few ounces. At a certain point, the cup’s going to overflow. The reader isn’t going to be able to keep up. This is something you have to pay particular attention to when you write sci-fi, because there’s always a lot to explain in a sci-fi story. If the cup gets too full, the brain shuts down and you’ve lost your reader. That’s unfortunately what happens here. Now every story’s different and there’s no perfect way to measure what the audience will or won’t understand. But if you keep this rule in mind, that the cup, at some point, can overflow, then there’s a good chance you’ll stop before the top of the glass.