July 2010 Archives

With a 17 year-old Andy heading off to College, his long-forgotten toys, including Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack), Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) and Hamm (John Ratzenberger), are in danger of being left behind. Finding themselves instead sent to toy haven Sunnyside Daycare centre, Woody and co. are taken in by the loveable Lotso Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty), head toy of Sunnyside. However, Lotso may not be all as he seems - he and his plethora of toy minions may have an ulterior motive for welcoming the unassuming newcomers into their home.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief excelling in the art of dream extraction, stealing secrets from people's minds for shady organisations. For his last job, Cobb is given a proposition by businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe): plant an idea in the mind of the heir to a global energy corporation (Cillian Murphy) and Cobb will be allowed back into his American homeland and see his estranged children again. Cobb must first assemble a crack team for the ultimate anti-heist - Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the point man; Eames (Tom Hardy), the forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), the chemist; and Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect.

Of all the great American director's work, Munich deserves a re-appraisal as the best Spielberg film ever made. It's an unconventional choice, perhaps, but probably only because it's one of his least-seen pictures. Plus, could a director responsible for so many happy childhood memories and famous for family fare like Jurassic Park, E.T., Close Encounters and Indiana Jones, really be any good at making a bleak, graphically violent, paranoid revenge drama centred on a character faced with an - by the credits - unresolved crisis of faith and identity?