When Inception was released in 2010, it became an instant classic.
The mind-bending thriller features dazzling effects and truly original storytelling.
Director Christopher Nolan created a mesmerizing dreamworld, and there's nothing half-remembered
about this cinematic triumph.
It's been analyzed and picked apart for years.
The tone and style of Inception is totally unique, and matching it with similar content
is about as easy as planting an idea in someone's head.
That said, here are some other movies that Inception fans can enjoy... and now is the
time to watch them.
Before you become an old man.
"Filled with regret."
"Waiting to die alone."
At its heart, Inception is a heist film an elaborate, mind altering heist.
That sense of a carefully orchestrated plan going to hell is all over Triple Frontier.
Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck star as ex-Delta Force members who reunite to put their military
skills to use in a tumultuous region of South America.
At the start of the film, Santiago "Pope" Garcia returns to the States and recruits
his former squad members to steal a large sum of money from a Colombian drug lord.
"I've got estimates.
He's got over 75 million dollars in cash with him."
"Holy s---."
"Yeah."
But the job gets complicated when they find a larger sum of money than they planned and
Affleck's character becomes obsessed with getting as much of the cash out as possible.
Transporting hundreds of millions, along with a wounded crew member, becomes a serious problem
as they scramble to get out of the country.
There is an ominous tone throughout Triple Frontier that gives the viewer a constant
sense of anxiety.
Nothing goes according to plan and emotions run hot among the entire crew.
A good heist film is always a fun ride, and with Triple Frontier, much like Inception,
there's much more to the story than simply cracking a safe.
Throughout Inception, Cobb is surrounded by highly capable associates who know how to
focus on their roles in order for them to succeed as a whole.
The opposite appears to be true with a slick, composed Brad Pitt and the ineptitude that
surrounds him in Killing Them Softly.
The film follows the fallout from the clunky robbery of a mafia poker game.
Two heroin-addicted criminals are hired to rob the underground game, which is run by
a guy named Markie Trattman, who had once admitted to setting up a robbery of his own
game in the past.
The plan behind the robbery is that everyone will blame Trattman.
Unfortunately, no one involved can keep their mouths shut.
Killing Them Softly occurs in late 2008 during the financial crisis and presidential election.
While the country is trying to band together for a common goal, Pitt's character knows
all that glitters is not gold.
He makes sure we know exactly how he feels about the state of the world, dispensing his
bleak wisdom with the kind of charm only Brad Pitt can deliver.
One of the reality-altering aspects of Inception is its warping of time within the dream.
"Well dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right?
It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."
To continue down that wormhole, look no further than Time Trap.
This surprising gem follows a group of archaeological students as they search for their lost professor
in a remote cave in the wilderness.
As they move deeper into the cave, they begin to discover bizarre anomalies, like the body
of a friend they left outside before they ventured in.
They realize that the cave has some sort of time distortion field that's causing time
to move much slower inside than it does outside.
The filmmakers deliver a tightly woven story filled with paradoxes and complexity in a
remarkably direct way.
In similar fashion to Inception, the characters in Time Trap grapple with the unusual reality
of their situation.
And even though the story seems simple at first, the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than
you expect.
Time Trap is clearly an independent film, but rather than groaning at the budget constraints,
you'll be wondering why the filmmakers weren't given a blank check.
If there's any downside to Inception, it's that there isn't enough Tom Hardy.
If you're looking for a remedy to that problem, check out Legend.
You get twice the Tom Hardy, as he plays gangster Reggie Kray and his twin brother Ronnie.
The film takes place in 1960s London, where the Krays are major players in the criminal
world.
The American Mafia seeks to move into London and hire the brothers as muscle for their
new casino.
Reggie clashes with rival gangs, house lords, and the police while trying to control his
schizophrenic brother.
It's an intriguing story laced with plenty of British bravado that makes you feel as
though you should be viewing it with a glass of scotch.
While Inception is a surgical procedure, Legend is a bar brawl that beats the story into you.
"Now before we start, I got a little joke for ya.
You'll love this one.
A paranoid schizophrenic who walks into a bar."
In Inception, Tom Hardy's character Eames is a forger who is capable of morphing into
other people inside the dream world in order to manipulate their targets.
It's a fitting role for Hardy, given his real-world ability to occupy characters with ease.
Lawless is a perfect display of his ability to be likable even while playing characters
that are anything but.
Lawless follows the Bondurant brothers, who run a moonshine business during the Prohibition
period in the early 1930s in America.
Forrest and his brothers Jack and Howard push back against the U.S. Marshal attempting to
skim profits from local moonshiners.
Hardy is the patriarch of the gang and shines among a loaded cast rounded out by Shia Labeouf,
Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and Guy Pearce, to name a few.
It has a gritty wild west vibe and shows that no matter what time period you plop Tom Hardy
into, he'll always totally own his character.
Our totem of reason throughout Inception is Ellen Page, who plays Ariadne.
She calls out Cobb on his faults and isn't afraid to stir the pot by digging into the
truth of his history with Mal.
"Why can't you go home?”
"Because they think I killed her."
Don't worry if you find yourself wanting to watch more Page after you've crawled out of
limbo most of the characters she plays have an undercurrent of virtue, and that's what
allows us to fall right alongside her in Tallulah.
Page stars as the titular character Tallulah, a homeless teenager who survives by stealing
credit cards and robbing hotels.
She gets roped into babysitting a hotel guest's child when the mother mistakes her for the
hotel maid.
The mother is drunk most of the time and only cares about her romantic interests, so Tallulah
ends up taking the child and claiming it as her own in order to win her boyfriend back.
While Inception had Ellen Page sharing the screen with other stars, Tallulah gives her
most of the screen time, and she responds to the challenge with a layered portrayal
of a flawed individual.
If the main thing you took from Inception is that you need more Leonardo DiCaprio in
your life, then you could do worse than turning to the Tarantino universe.
Django Unchained gives DiCaprio a much different role, but it's no less captivating.
Starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, Django takes place in the mid 1800s, where Dr. King
Schultz liberates a slave named Django and teaches him the art of bounty hunting.
They travel across the west in search of their bounties, taking vengeance on slave drivers
along the way.
After developing the necessary skills to be a bounty hunter, Django and Schultz concoct
a plan to free Django's wife from a plantation owner named Calvin J. Candie, played by none
other than DiCaprio.
"Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention."
A sadistic slave owner may be contrary to the Leo we saw in Inception, but it's easily
one of the most captivating performances of his career.
Even if you took out all the theories and philosophy, Inception would still be a sleek
action movie.
If those stylized shootouts left you wanting more bullets, then we'd recommend checking
out Free Fire, featuring none other than Cillian Murphy.
After playing the target for Cobb and the gang in Inception, he got to play an entirely
different role here as the leader of an Irish Republican Army group.
When Chris arrives at a warehouse to purchase a van full of guns, he's prepared for a quick
and easy exchange.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the previous evening, a member of Chris' crew got into
a bar fight with a member of the other crew.
The criminals banter until things escalate, and the result is a seemingly never-ending
gun battle in a derelict warehouse with hilarious back and forth insults.
"You smell like perfume."
"It's...beard oil."
Free Fire blends its humor and violence into a whirlwind that doesn't let up until the
credits roll.
If you want a well-written film with plenty of bullets, you won't be disappointed.
Inception raises a lot of questions about the emotions that drive us.
While Cobb is able to dive into his own mind and compartmentalize his feelings, others
don't possess that luxury.
When dreams and reality start to blur together it can be hard to distinguish the two.
That's what happens with Alison Brie's character in Horse Girl.
Horse Girl tells the story of Sarah and her struggle to make sense of her place in the
world amidst the grief of losing her mother.
When she starts having vivid dreams and sleepwalking, Sarah has trouble trusting what she sees especially
considering her family's history of mental illness.
Sarah sees people from her dreams in her daily life and eventually becomes convinced that
she's been abducted by aliens and is a clone of her grandmother.
Horse Girl presents several ways to interpret what's real and what isn't.
It's a sobering, reality-warping trip with an ending that will leave you with a lot to
think about.
Woven throughout Inception is the love story involving Cobb and his wife.
The film asks a lot of questions about whether the Mal we meet in Cobb's mind is just like
the Mal that existed in reality.
A similar dilemma is presented in The One I Love, starring Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass
with a small supporting appearance from Ted Danson.
In order to remedy their relationship woes, Ethan and Sophie plan a getaway to a remote
estate so they can spend quality time together.
The couple spend an evening drinking, but their enjoyable night together ends in an
argument.
The next morning they both remember having pleasant evenings with each other in the guest
house, but later discover that neither of them actually remembers the experience the
same way.
As it turns out, they each have doppelgangers living in the guesthouse that represent the
idealistic versions of how they view each other.
The One I Love is a uniquely thought-provoking love story.
It explores heavy questions involved with relationships, such as whether the person
we love exists only as an ideal in our minds or if we truly love the individual we chose
as our partner.
There are intense moments during Inception when Cobb needs to face the realities of his
relationship with his wife.
The One I Love has similar moments, presented in a very different way.
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