Inception is a good film, even a great film. Best of the year? Mmgh, well, maybe: It's hard to say quite yet, and I haven't seen everything that has come out so far. Best ever? No, not even of the decade, far from it. I mean, I don't even think it's Nolan's best: I liked Memento better.
So, it was a good movie with some genuinely intelligent content to it. But it wasn't developed well enough, the philosophical edge, and the movie suffered from wanting to be a hollywood action-flick. Quite self-consciously, mind you, so much so that interpreting all of it as an allegory for film making isn't out of the question. Nevertheless, boring action is boring action wheter the writers know it or not. And the action could have been great, had the physics of the dreamworld been utilized more.
Technically it was top-notch, structurally quite clever. And I did enjoy the postmodern ontology of the world presented. But nihilism (or rather, solipsism) as a philosophical dilemma is so very old and worn out, it has been done a million times in a million places and a lot better than here. Did you have a genuine epiphany watching Inception, a realization that the world we perceive may not be real? Neither did I. The movie, while discussing philosophy, had nothing original to offer. It was rather like philosophy 101, very interesting, even profound, as long as you have lived in isolation of all modern thought.
Granted, it was intellectually stimulating, in the same way that making a jigsaw-puzzle is. It required a refreshingly intense amount of concentration to sit through the movie, and to grasp the structure, underestand what was going on, and for that I commend Nolan (though by now it is to be expected of him). Still, I think Memento did this better.
And the ending, oh, the ending, the praised ending. Am I the only person who saw this movie and felt that the ending, rahter than being excessively innovative, clever and deep, was extremely predictable and cheap: of course it was going to have an open ending. And I don't even think that was really an open ending: he was obviously still asleep. The dreamlike quality of the whole returning-to-home part, oversaturated camera, his children were exactly the same age as in his memories, playing at the exact same place as in his memories etc. The interesting thing here is: which world then, was the "real world", if there was one. I don't think there was (And ofcourse there wasn't: it's a movie and it knows it: it is Nolan's dream, it's our collective dream, he can't wake up because even if he did he'd still be within a dream of a sort). The world, right from the beginning, acted like a dream, moreso than most of the dreams they went into: when have you been chased through an alley by thugs, an alley that's progressively becoming narrower untill you can barely fit through it? Why were the dream-machines never explained? Because dreams don't need explanations. The architect's name is Ariadne, really? That's a likely coincidence in the waking world. No, it isn't, but in a psychoanalysts dream, certainly, what else could the therapist be called?
To summarize: it was a good movie. It appears deeper than it is, but if you try, you will find something of interest in it. If I were to review it, I would give it a score of 8.5/10, which is distinguishably above average.