Inception: Remembered

Last night I completed a second viewing of Inception (in two parts to extend the awesomeness...and because all weeknight viewings accompanied by 7.5 months of pregnancy have a hard stop of about 8:15pm...love you babe!). While the novelty wore off a smigeon, and the complexity seemed a bit more contrived, I still loved it. It was still gripping, and I had a new appreciation for diCaprio's performance. It got me thinking, where does Inception rate in my movie-watching history?

These are my top 5 movie theater experiences:

5. Batman Begins (2005) - As we all know, Batman is the coolest superhero, so when it's done well, it's AWESOME! After Tim Burton's version, all Batman-related movies might as well been directed by Lady GaGa, so while Begins didn't have the comic-booky feel that made Burton's Batman so great, this was so new and refreshing for a Batman movie it didn't matter. I was so pleasantly surprised with Christian Bale, villains were creepy. It is the best Batman I have ever seen.

4. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - The anticipation is partly what made this so good. I remember how excited I was just from watching the trailers. Watching this in the theater I kept thinking, 'this is almost EXACTLY how I pictured this.' I could have watched another 2 hours of it.

3. Jurassic Park (1993) - My 11 yr old eyes had never seen special effects quite like it. Even watching it today, it's pretty impressive. Again, the anticipation factor with this movie was high, especially since I had to wait for my parents to decide whether it would be suitable for children under 13. Aside from the effects, there were 3 really memorable characters (Samuel L, Goldblum, dude-who-played-Nedry) and a lot of funny lines still heavily quoted in McMillan conversations...."Hold on to your butts....."

2. Star Wars: Episode I (1999) - I mention Episode I with some trepidation, for fear of losing credibility in my movie-buffness. I take this experience on the whole, before thinking too hard about JarJar or Samuel L Jedi: a) I was seeing Star Wars in a theater, which was a pretty legendary event for my parents' generation who was there at its inception, and now I got to be there for the next installment of Star Wars; and b) tell me the pod racing and the Darth Maul fight at the end didn't blow you away and have you leaving the theater saying "woah!" And while you think about that, think about this - when you first saw Episode I, you hadn't seen the next two yet. You didn't know. But I digress...on to my favorite.

1. INCEPTION (2010) - Who can say if it's because it is so fresh in my mind, but I honestly can't remember being so excited after the movie was over. It was like eating dessert for 148min and feeling GREAT! There are a few things outside the awesomeness of the film that made it especially good: a) I was on vacation with Hannah by VA Beach; b) I actually wasn't anticipating greatness. It looked like it could be cool, but so did a series of other movies I'd seen that summer (like The Lightning Thief); c) we only paid $6 in Chesapeake, VA.

So there you have it. In case you were wondering, Avatar was a close 103rd