In praise of … Christopher Nolan

Deja vu? Of course you have, but that is the whole point of a summer season monopolised by sequels and franchise cinema. To go the box office today is to see old favourites dressed up as new: Toy Story 3, Shrek Forever After, The Karate Kid (remake), Predators (remake). Not so much variations on a theme as electronic music on a loop. If for no other reason, Christopher Nolan's Inception is worthy of note, a high-octane blockbuster which is both original and thought-provoking. Nolan is no stranger to sequels and remakes. Insomnia was a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, and of course there was Batman Begins. But much like Tim Burton, Nolan showed his ability to break out from well-defined parameters. Nolan's Batman series are not simply comic-book films. Stylistically, they have more in common with Heat and The Usual Suspects than they do with Spider-Man or Iron Man. Nolan has been likened to Stanley Kubrick, only to be knocked back as forced and elephantine . Both the accolades and the brickbats miss the point. In Memento, he toys with the complexities of a thriller shot backwards. In Inception he places a sci-fi heist inside the moving contours of a dreaming mind. The visuals, like the streets of Paris folding in on themselves, fights in zero gravity, or sending a train ploughing through a busy street, are dizzying. But the best moments are human ones, when one character panics with the realisation she could be in the dream of another. Nolan is emerging as a master storyteller.