Nice reading.  I have a few, none seem to conflict with the film so clearly half the fun of Inception is the open nature of what is applied.

POSSIBLE SPOLIERS BELOW

A reading of mine is that Cobb's childrens' faces are his Totem.  He never wants to see a false image of their faces hence why he always looked away until the end of the film when he abandons his temporary Totem - Mal's - and embraces his own again.

Another possibility is the whole thing is a dream until Cobb wakes in the plane at the end.  Everyone he sees is a stranger who featured in his dream, and the only people who really know him are his kids and Father in Law at the end.  There is no dream tech, the whole thing was a dream, one in which, filtred through it, we get elements of his real life issues mixed with the dream thriller.

END SPOLIERS

I like the first one. The only problem with that, is they are in the same clothes, and the same age. He was gone for months from the US, so they would have aged (if nothing else, the boy would have out grown that outfit).

Last one works for me. Being he never talks to anyone at the end. The only posable indication that he even knew one, was when the woman looked at him as he went through immigration. But, I would guess women look at him all the time. At least that's what my wife does.

Personally, I thought Inception was a better film than Memento. Memento reeked of a one-trick pony film, kind of like Run Lola Run. It was well-executed and quite good but lacked the all-around polish of Inception.

But I wouldn't put Inception on any of my best films ever list. It may crack the top 20 in my top sci-fi movies ever but even that's a stretch. Still, it's one of the better films I've seen in the past decade that caters to my personal preference (sci-fi style films that try to bend the mind a bit).

POSSIBLE SPOLIERS

Had a second watch, and I'm now wondering about Cobb's Wedding Ring.  I can't be sure, but I got the impression he wasn't always wearing it, depending upon the sequence in the film.

Another clue as to dream/awake distinctions?  Another candidate for Cobb's Totem?  Now I want to know whether his Wedding Ring is being worn at the end.

END SPOILERS

GGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRR

saturday will be the day

big success here in  Paris (no place for me and my buddies on wednesday)

AMAZING FILM!!!!

The director's best imo....though The Prestige comes close...

Still its the best film I've seen since Star Wars Episode III : Revenge Of The Site....*runs*

I think Inception is one of my favorite sci-fi films already.  It's probably in my personal top 20.  But in my opinion it's Nolan's best film by far, and it's probably even my favorite film about dreams or nested realities.  I've had a ton of lucid dreams, and I have to see every movie that touches on the subject, just to see if it's anything like the dreams I've had.  The idea itself isn't new, but I don't think I've ever seen it done this well in a film before.  I saw one critic saying it was ripping off The Matrix!  What the shit is that?  As if The Matrix invented the idea of "it's all a dream world" in the year 1999?  The idea has been a part of many religions and philosophies for thousands of years.  Ugh, I hate critics who are so willfully ignorant.  It's like saying The Terminator invented robots, or Lady Gaga invented dance music.

Bleck.... anyway...

It definitely blew The Matrix out of the water with its characters, story, and action.  I love Yuen Wo-Ping's choreography in the Matrix, and in all his movies really, but he's got nothing on the hallway stuff in Inception.  Whoa.

The nested dream layers really reminded me of eXistenZ, but the subconscious projections of the wife subplot really got me to care about the characters more.  And I thought it was great how each layer of the subconscious was so completely different, and had different manifestations of Mal.  (If you haven't seen eXistenZ, it's basically the same dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream type of story, but instead of dreams, it's multiple layers of virtual reality video games.  And it's directed by Cronenberg and stars Jude Law.  It's awesome.)

Also, it's always great to see one of these dream movies use the dreams as a plot device rather than the point of the whole film.  The dreams were an excuse to have badass action scenes, many different locations, crazy physics, and battles with your own subconscious.  But it still remained a solid action/thriller instead of a philosophical treatise about what's real or not, like some other meandering dream-logic films like Waking Life.

The group dream stuff was done pretty well in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (I highly recommend it to all nerds, just for the Dungeons and Dragons kid in a wheelchair who turns into "the wizard master" in his dreams to fight Freddy Krueger), and Satoshi Kon's Paprika, one of my favorite animes of all time.  Paprika is about a similar device for group dreaming, but for therapeutic purposes instead of theft.  But the dreams in Paprika are craaaaaaaaaazier.

Honestly, I felt like Inception was a great blend of eXistenZ (for all the nested reality and "wait, whose dream is this?" moments), Paprika (for the technology, dream-hopping, and the "dream detective" plot), and Solaris (for the sci-fi ghost of an ex-wife haunting you forever angle).  But... I thought those were all great tastes that tasted great together.  I give it uh... 4.5 stars out of 5.  I dock half a star for that horribly cheesy "dream a little bigger" line during that one shootout.  I'm pretty sure that line was written for the trailer, but it's too cheesy for the film in my opinion.  The whole movie was serious business and then he says some stupid one-liner, and it hurt.  There goes your perfect score, stupid movie.

Whoa.  Oops.  Sorry about that wall of text.  Got carried away.

TL;DRL: 4.5 out of 5.  Loved it.  Favorite dream movie.  Nolan's best.

I can't believe how much I loved this film. This IS Nolan's best film. Hell, I saw this movie yesterday and I still can't stop thinking about it. Bravo to Nolan!

Question to anyone who understood the film entirely. How the heck did Cobb rescue Saito in the dream? I still didn't get how he was able to reach him in the end.

TBH that's open to interpretation.  For example, what if the whole film is Cobb's dream (possible and doesn't go against anything shown).  In that case there was no rescue.  It was just another part of Cobb's own dream.

Alternatively, it's indicated that in Limbo dreamers can co-exist if they enter from the same preceeding dream level (as Cobb and Mal did) so in fact all Cobb had to do was allow himself to enter Limbo and he would find Saito who had already preceeded him there from the previous level.  Then all he had to do was hold onto his identiy (signified by Cobb's youthful appearane vs aged Saito who had lost himself in Limbo) and get Saito to join him in leaving Limbo in the same manner Cobb and Mal did.  As Cobb has supposedly been to Limbo and returned he would be forewarned what to expect/do.

I'd note we're not shown exactly how they do exist Limbo.  It's implied they will use the gun but not shown.  This also casts doubt (deliberately) on what's a dream or not and whether they really leave Limbo or not as it is literally impossible to say exactly how they exited Limbo (vs being shown how Cobb and Mal do this).

Fun huh?

I think Nolan plays around with Limbo, though, and what level it really is, if you compare the look and content of the various levels shown.  For example, the beach Cobb washes up on in Limbo much more strongly resebles the one from his own private dream earlier (complete with his children) vs the cold, dark beach of Limbo shown previousy.

But I swear in the ending, when he rolls that thingy on the table before going to finally meet his kids that spinning thing was just about to fall before they just end the movie

so I don't think the whole movie was Cobb's dream...