Inception Fails to Plant an Idea in My Mind

Christopher Nolan is known for mastering the art of the thoughtful thriller -- a suspenseful, high budget film that touches upon psychological or salient political issues. In Momento he questions the nature of memory. In The Dark Knight he addresses the side-effects of doing-good by making Batman a metaphor for interventionist America. Inception, his latest film, is a psychological thriller that questions the significance of waking life relative to dream states.

Inception opens with a close up image of the protagonist, Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) washed up on an unknown shore. He gets picked up by guards and presented to an extremely old looking Asian man. The next scene flashes to some unknown time before, revealing the old man to be Saito (Ken Watanabe). Dom and his sidekick, Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), seem to be trying to steal something from Saito. But just when you think you're getting the hang of things, the scene shifts yet again to images of the same characters sleeping in an entirely different setting. The next few scenes dart between images of the same characters in one of three different scenes: a decadent Japanese palace; a sketchy apartment in an politically unstable city; and a train. Despite the suspense, the writing manages to situate the viewer well.

We learn that Dom is an extractor who is paid to perform the illegal job of entering people's dreams to discover their thoughts and ideas. Extraction is usually done for corporate espionage purposes. When Dom fails on his mission to steal from Saito, the Japanese business man offers to let Dom work for him, but to perform a much trickier task than extraction. Saito wants Dom to do an inception--to place an idea in someone's head. Specifically, Dom is to plant the idea in an energy heir's (Cillian Murphy) mind to dismantle his father's company once his father passes away.

The idea of Inception is initially mind-blowing and thoroughly captivating as your mind works to find out all you can about this new idea. I enjoyed the expository scenes where Dom explains the mechanics of entering others' dreams to his new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page). Also cool to see pictures of Parisian streets fold up over each other. But as the film continues, and the mind accepts the idea of extractions and inceptions, Inception becomes just another plot-driven thriller.

The entire film is basically centered around Saito's one assignment for Dom. Most of the characters are simply two-dimensional vehicles by which to advance the plot. Dom is the only fuller character. His three-dimensional history is manifested by flashbacks of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), and of his children. We learn that he is so desperate to accept Saito's plan because it would allow him to go back to the United States, which he has been banned from due to a mysterious crime from his past. But even Dom's regrets and secrets become an obstacle to the team's mission when his teammates learn that he brings a projection of Mal into each of his missions. And she's out for revenge.

The lack of depth of characters reflect the lack of depth of Inception's world. Though the world of Inception looks like ours, it's not. It's a world where entering people's dreams, getting addicted to living in dreams, and extraction are all possible. In order to be convincing, the rules of this world simply can't be invented as the story goes along. Unfortunately, Inception doesn't feel wholly formed, in contrast to an Avatar, for instance, where an environment is introduced, fully-formed. Limitations to extraction and inception are randomly introduced throughout. It's apparently difficult to plant ideas because people need to think that these ideas came from themselves. Instead of just going into someone's dream, the team needs to go into a dream inside a dream inside a dream. Like many mediocre thrillers, Inception uses some convenient situations to build suspense. For instance, in normal dreams, one's death leads to them waking up from the dream. But in chemically induced sleeps, death leads to an indefinite state of limbo. This conveniently creates more obstacles for Dom when one of his team members gets wounded in a dream. Too bad the audience just needs to take this for granted and not ask many questions. Unfortunately, the need to take too many things for granted makes Inception a shallow portrayal of a rich idea.

The Kids Are All Right: Probably the Best Movie of the Summer

"You want a family so much, go out and make your own," Nic (Annette Bening), the controlling half of a lesbian couple, tells the sperm donor who has fathered her children, at one point in Lisa Cholodenko's new film, The Kids Are All Right. Though the film's plot tells the story of how a family of four--Nic and Jules (Julianne Moore) and their two teenage children--deal with the discovery of their sperm donor's identity, Nic's statement sums up the movie's deeper issues. Notably, what makes a family, how to welcome a stranger into a family, and how to let children grow up.

These themes, told through a strong script written by Cholodenko and Seth Blumberg, make the film appealing to a wide audience. Nic's doctor self contrasts nicely to Jules' relaxed joblessness. They also have a college-bound, academically inclined daughter, Joni, and a slightly rebellious fifteen year old son, Laser. Laser prompts Joni to reach out to their sperm donor when she turns eighteen. Paul soon enters the family's life in his older-yet-slightly-youthful-motorcycling-organic-restauranteur way. He clashes with Nic's orderly world, dividing the family between those who like Paul and those who don't.

But never mind these large issues; the brilliance is in the details. Cholodenko focuses on some choice moments to reveal Nic and Jule's relationship. Early on, they have sex to gay porn. It's loud, but completely untitillating at the same time like how any other married couple might make love. Laser later finds this porn and confronts his Moms about it. Their endearing explanation includes the fact that "women's sexuality is expressed internally, and sometimes we just need to see it externalized." Later, Nic reveals her sensitive side when she sings all of Joni Mitchell's "All I Want." "All I really really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too," Nic sings a cappela to a surprised audience of family members.

These lyrics speak to the type of the marriage Nic and Jules seem to strive towards: a companionate relationship where each partner expects to help the other one improve him or herself--not so different from the yuppie idea of a heterosexual companionate marriage.

Though the film is not overtly political, it seems significant that it takes place in California, a state that has recently repealed gay marriage. It implies that Nic and Jules married before the ban was passed. Though my no means perfect, their relationship is one that most couples can relate to. Jules announces that "marriage is fucking hard," and I could feel everyone in the audience nodding.

Critics have been swooning over The Kids Are All Right's "realistic portrayal of a lesbian relationship." But the realism of the relationship has also blinded reviewers to many other cliches in the film. Ruffalo's character, Paul, is entirely a cliche. It's the same scruffy-haired, somewhat irresponsible dude that Ruffalo always plays. He is suddenly jolted into a higher level of adulthood when he meets his biological children, and doesn't really know how to cope. Other cliches include the uptight person who drinks too much, and a daughter who yells at her parents that they need to let her grow up. These cliches make it easy to imagine the same story with a heterosexual couple, adopted kids, and the biological parents.

These cliches are ultimately forgivable since the film is so thought provoking in its own right, and beautifully acted. The family is quite memorable and not easily substituted in the mind. It will be difficult to find another release this summer that matches The Kids Are All Right.

Winter's Bone: Chilling and Satisfying

At first glance, Winter's Bone seems to be one of those gritty movies that are so popular at film festivals on the coasts about people with hard lives who live in the middle of the country. Like Frozen River, that other movie about a family trying to make ends meet when Father disappears, Winter's Bone takes place in the winter, casting darkness over the entire film, and shows the dark, cramped homes of non-coastal elites. Like Frozen River, Winter's Bone reveals a hidden society to the protagonist and to the audience. But unlike Frozen River, where a middle-aged protagonist purposefully enters the world of people-smuggling, Winter's Bone tracks one girl's coming of age with her unwitting discovery of an underground network of methamphetamine producers.

Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is a seventeen year old Missourian who goes on a quest to find her father as his court date approaches when she learns that he put their entire property as collateral for his bond. Unfortunately for Ree, she's also responsible for two younger siblings, Sonny and Ashley, as well as their mentally ill mother. Despite Ree's youth, the audience doesn't expect this to be a coming of age movie, since Ree already seems quite competent and hard-nosed at the beginning of the film. We see her cooking breakfast, teaching her siblings aphorisms "Never ask for what should be offered," and shooting and skinning squirrels.

After learning about her father, though, Ree's hard, yet routine, days are broken. She goes on a quest to speak with everyone known acquaintance of her father's. We soon realize that many of these folks are fellow meth addicts or dealers. Ree soon learns that many of these folks have secrets to hide. Her father's older brother, Teardrop (John Hawkes), aggressively holds her neck to caution her about talking to people. It's hard to know early on if he's protecting himself, or protecting Ree. Ree's next door neighbor tries to convince her that her dad died in a meth lab explosion.

As Ree's search continues, she unravels a network of hidden rules and hierarchies that govern this underground society. Two rules are ultimately important: loyalty, and the ability to forget what one's seen. But in contrast to a typical fish out of water story, the world that Ree uncovers has been right in front of her all along. She is a product of it all along without knowing it. As she is put through a series of trials to test her loyalty, we wonder if being born into a society of underground drug pushers will be enough to save her from them.

Joan Rivers' Comeback

The subtitle of a new documentary about a year in the life of Joan Rivers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, embodies so many meanings in four words. First and foremost, it refers to Joan Rivers' personality. She is seen as a comedic icon with a penchant for the un-PC. Example: "The only child I could ever like is Helen Keller because she doesn't talk." Back in the 1970's, she openly made jokes about abortions, referring to them as "appendectomies." She is even unabashed at calling her own daughter "a stupid cunt" for refusing a $400,000 Playboy gig.

Second, there's the meaner interpretation of Joan Rivers as the work of plastic surgeons. She is notorious for having face lifts up the wahzoo. Her Comedy Central Celebrity Roast appearance resulted in a barrage of jokes along the lines of "Joan Rivers has had so many facelifts, that she has to sneeze out her clit." Sigh. But this documentary allows Rivers to defend herself on the topic of plastic surgery, and she has several good points. To Rivers, plastic surgery is a progressive thing for women, giving us an opportunity to purchase something we weren't born with. Beauty--or the lack thereof--has been a constant theme in Rivers' life, and a source of many of her jokes. "My mother told me that looks aren't everything." Beat. "She told me this often."

Finally--and most importantly--Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is about Joan Rivers doing whatever she can to find a piece of work. At 75 (now 77), Rivers is as energetic and eager as ever. The source of her passion is less a desire for money as a desire to matter. Through interviews with her manager, Billy Sammeth, we learn that Rivers's long-running private joke is "let me get my sunglasses" before she opens her datebook so as not to be blinded by the pages of inkless white. So this year in the life of Joan Rivers is really a year in the life of Rivers making her career matter. The journey begins with a a new play, Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress. Since Rivers's Broadway debut, Fun City, bombed she had been reluctant to open a new show in New York. This time, she takes the play first to Edinburgh and then to London to test the waters. Though the audience feels bad for Rivers when she only receives weak critical reception, Rivers is able to put this immediately behind her to do her next big thing, appear on celebrity Apprentice.

At the same time, money still plays a role in Rivers' life. Rivers lives "as Marie Antoinette would have lived had she had money," in an ornately decorated Manhattan penthouse. She claims she has to work to support this lifestyle. In addition, she has many staff, including a housekeeper, a manager, an agent, and two assistants. These each come with children whose private school tuition Rivers has also kindly taken up. As such, we Rivers finds herself doing gigs in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, boarding a plane to LA, sleeping for three hours, and waking up again in Minneapolis. Though her lifestyle might be garish, and her personality garrulous, there is something commendable about Joan Rivers' work ethic. At film's end, I found myself rooting for her in her goal of exceeding the longevity of Don Rickles' and Phyllis Diller's careers.

The Inanity Coming-of-Age-in-the-Age-of-Rock Movies

Now that the boomer generation is getting old, and the generation that remembers where they were when the Beatles premiered on Johnny Carson is getting really old, nostalgic movies are coming out about the birth of rock. Two such films, Taking Woodstock and Pirate Radio, cover much of the same material. Young, straight and narrowish people are suddenly exposed to romantic hardships, hidden secrets of the past, and forced to grow up all with music in the background. Taking Woodstock, which aims to vaguely trace the history of Woodstock, centers on twenty-something Elliot Teichberg, and his journey to bring a music festival to his town of Woodstock while gaining independence from his parents. Pirate Radio, which aims to trace the history of off-shore radio stations in Great Britain in the 1960's, centers on a teenage Carl's stay on the Radio Rock ship while he discovers sex, the identity of his father, and civil disobedience.

Neither film is particularly insightful. Both revel in cliche and heavy-handed delivery of messages. Taking Woodstock tries to tell people to believe in themselves, and break loose by having Elliot (Dmitri Martin) discover his homosexuality and get high on acid to Jefferson Airplane's "Red Telephone." Long sequences of haziness illuminate the freedom of drugs. Similarly, Pirate Radio tries to sell people on the idea of fighting for what you believe in by having Radio Rock's entire crew agree one by one to stay on the ship even after the government shuts it down. Elgar's Nimrod swells in the background. Long montages of random Brits enjoying Radio Rock illustrate music's liberating effect. We get it: music equals love, democracy, and all that is good in the world.

The one thing that makes Pirate Radio more entertaining to watch than Taking Woodstock is that Pirate Radio takes itself way less seriously. Maybe it's the British sense of humor, but the film seems to wink at us during a ship-sinking scene that reminds one of the drama of Titanic. Things are resolved a bit too easily, but also with humor. In one set piece, two DJ's play a game of chicken by climbing on to the mast and then jumping off. Plus, the music selection is fabulous. Pirate Radio hits all the Sixties greats aside from the Beatles, including Cat Stevens, the Beach Boys, and Leonard Cohen. Taking Woodstock only has some snippets of Woodstock acts. Though Pirate Radio is a bit long clocking in at 2 hours, its soundtrack makes an otherwise vapid movie bearable. Too bad Woodstock can't say the same.

What Precious and An Education Have in Common

Precious and An Education, two tales of 16 year old girls growing up, are also wonderfully thought provoking films on the subject of female agency and the role of education.

Precious, the more infamous of the two, is about an obese black girl (Gabourey Sidibe) growing up in Harlem in the 1980's. Her mother, played by Mo'nique, abuses her on a regular basis, treating her like a indentured servant who needs to cook to earn her keep. We immediately learn that Precious has also been consistently abused by her father, with whom she is now pregnant for the second time. After getting kicked out of her public middle school, where she is still a student at the age of 16, she enrolls in an alternative school and lands in the caring hands of Ms. Blu Rain. What teeters on the brink of cliche (teacher saves student; student transcends her situation with literacy) is saved by the constant barrage of bleakness in Precious' life. We learn that her oldest daughter has Down's Syndrome, and witness another terrible fight between Precious and her mother.

Most intriguing are Precious's seamlessly integrated fantasy scenes. While her mother force-feeds her while watching an old movie, Precious projects herself into the film and imagines a more caring dialogue between the two women. These fantasies are the only space where Precious is in charge of her life. Her mother is no more free. We learn that the reason she hates Precious is because her boyfriend (Precious's father) showed more affection for Precious than her mother from the moment she was born. Precious shows the limited agency of poor black women since both women's lives are controlled by the father, who is barely even in the film. The only characters who have some agency are the educated teacher, Ms. Rain, and the social worker played by Mariah Carey.

An Education is also based on a sordid, if more palatable, premise. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is studying for her O levels on her way to Oxford when she meets David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), an older man. David quickly impresses her and her parents with his sophisticated pursuits (art, classical music, fancy restaurants, traveling), and starts to date Jenny for real. Though Jenny learns of David's sketchy real estate business, she still enjoys the worldly education he offers her via trips to Oxford, Paris, and the auction house. Soon, Jenny is faced with a critical decision: David or Oxford.

This decision is made more complicated as Jenny questions the point of going to Oxford. When she broaches the idea of getting married to her father (Alfred Molina), he tells her she'll be taken care of and doesn't "need" an education anymore. This is 1961after all, and even educated women seemed to have few options. Jenny's one teacher who went to Cambridge seems to be a lonely spinster who grades horrible essays all day long. Here's where the story gets interesting as the viewer ponders how women can gain agency through education.

Though Precious and An Education are set 26 years apart in different countries and across different socio-economic lines, they send important messages about education. Book learning might not be enough, but it is a start.

Why I'm not a Fan of Up in the Air

"Did I make you feel cheap?" Alex (Vera Farmiga) asks Ryan Bingham as she leaves him alone in his hotel bed after a night of escapades in Up in the Air. "Yeah, leave the money on the dresser," he says. This exchange is what I remember about the film days after seeing it for the first time. It recalls the lighthearted, intelligent banter between Clooney and Farmiga that makes the film go down so smoothly as you watch. But it also reminds me that there's something cheap to Up in the Air's message, as if it's cashing in on a moment of economic weakness.

By now, you know that Up in the Air is about a man who fires people for a living. Ryan Bingham tells us in a series of voiceovers that he loves the air and hates attachments. But then he meets a woman who invites him to "think of me like yourself, except with a vagina." Alex and Ryan embark on a series of dalliances, meeting up in airport hotels across the country. Meanwhile, Ryan must bring one of his newest co-workers with him to show her the ropes. Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is an earnest college graduate who constantly badgers him about what his deal with Alex is. The deal turns out to be quite predictable. Through a series of well-written, well-acted events, we eventually get the message that connections and people are the things that we hold on to, whether or not we're employed.

This would be all fine and good if it weren't for the fact that Up in the Air seems like an attempt to placate an underemployed audience in the laziest way possible. In one scene where Clooney is firing someone, he tells him to see it as an opportunity to follow his dreams and become a hero to his kids, instead of wiling away at his lame desk job. What Clooney says has a ring of truth to it, but it also looks like he is merely pandering to the laid-off employee. Throughout the movie, I couldn't help wondering if the makers of Up in the Air were mirroring this technique by telling audiences something they want to hear. Are they condescending to tell us that in this world, human connections are all that ultimately matter?

Like many of Clooney's firees, I was also suspicious of the messenger. Ryan Bingham is not an empathetic figure. Nor is anyone else in Up in the Air. Keener is extremely annoying, and faux-feminist. Alex is almost too witty and feminist, until you learn that she's not. Up in the Air may have captured our attention this past awards season, but will certainly fade from memory the second the country grows strong enough not to see past Clooney's soothing voice.

What to Look for in French Films

For the most part, foreign films are like classic novels: the ones we hear about are the really good ones. But in recent years, I've noticed that foreign language films featuring big-name stars (Gael Garcia Bernal, Penelope Cruz, Audrey Tatou) might simply be trying to bank off American audiences. As such, a good rule of thumb is to follow is that foreign films that make it to US theaters with actors you've never heard of are going to be good, while those with a star-studded cast should be approached with more caution. Three French movies I recently viewed a la Netflix are a case in point.

The first, Summer Hours (L'Heure d'Ete) exemplifies good contemporary French film. Directed by Olivier Assayas, it's an intimate portrayal of three siblings who must divide up their mother's estate after her death. The estate is a rambling house in the French countryside filled with valuable turn of the century French art. Like 2008's The Class, it addresses the tensions in modern France between tradition and modernity; between the foreign and the native; between young and old. For instance, the oldest brother wants to keep the house and split the time there with his younger brother and sister. But the siblings, both of whom live abroad, want to sell the estate and divide the earnings. While the symbolism of the mother's house is quite obvious, Assayas doesn't beat you over and over with the themes.

The story is told through restrained dialogue; we see just enough of each character interacting with their spouses and their children to see where they are coming from. The sister, Adrienne (played by Juliette Binoche) is briefly seen with her American boyfriend at breakfast. She reads a French paper and then summarizes an article for the boyfriend. This quick exchange reveals how comfortable she is living with someone of a different background. Later, we aren't surprised when Adrienne announces her engagement to the American.

In contrast, the movie Paris is filled with as many cliches as the creators could fit. Romain Duris, a French actor who's made many appearances in American theaters over the past five years, plays an ailing young man in need of a heart condition. So as he stays indoors, he looks out the window and reflects on how lucky everyone else is to be alive and enjoying the city. How you don't realize the beauty until it's about to be snatched away. A series of loosely connected stories, Paris also tells of an architect who tries to find more meaning in his life after having a nightmare about being “too normal,” and a young Cameroonian who illegally immigrates to France. Yes, we get it: Paris is a changing city, and a city of hopes and dreams.

Finally, Coco Before Chanel is more of an Audrey Tatou vehicle than a biopic. Telling the tale of Coco Chanel before she became a famous designer, the movie typecasts Tatou as an inconspicuous, yet sharp-witted young woman. According to the film, Chanel’s practicality and disregard for others’ opinions lead her to design loose-fitting, comfortable clothing for women. Luckily, Chanel also has two affairs at key times to get the right people to invest in her fashion operations. Finally, a well timed death gives Coco the steely resolve to become Chanel. While the costumes provide a visual feast, the rest of a film merely provides a lesson on why not to watch biopics.

Why you should watch Food Inc

Any good progressive these days knows of the slew of food awareness media put out by the likes of Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer. Pollan's books The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and Safran Foer's Eating Animals cover some of the same territory. In a nutshell, factory farming is evil, and we should eat less meat. While Safran Foer actively promotes vegetarianism in contrast to Pollan, both writers employ some similar arguments including the health argument, the environmental argument, and the animal welfare argument.

The recent documentary, Food Inc, which contains extensive commentary from Michael Pollan, then should be expected to echo many of the same arguments that Pollan has made elsewhere. I decided to watch it as a member of the choir to which it preaches, rather than as a student looking for new lessons.

Food Inc surprised me by actually touching on more concrete arguments than theoretical arguments for animal welfare or environmentalism. Instead, it focuses on individual people and their stories. As the title suggests, the main argument for being more conscious about food decisions that Food Inc promotes is that food has become hijacked by a corporate industry that doesn't care about individuals. Companies like Monsanta, Tyson, and Cargill exploit the American consumer, the American government, and their own workers. The documentary opens with a segment on chicken farming. Although I'm pretty knowledgeable of the terrible conditions for chickens and the incredibly unnatural rate at which they are made to grow these days, I had no idea the extent to which individuals farmers are taken advantage of. According to Food Inc, a typically chicken farmer must take out $500,000 in loans, only to make $18,000 a year from Tyson/Purdue. Of course, Purdue controls all the prices and requires farmers to upgrade to expensive equipment in order to maintain their contracts. A woman interviewed in the film loses her contract after failing to upgrade to a close-aired chicken house. It's akin to the sharecropping system.

Other individual stories include a man who is sued by Monsanto for attempting to help farmers infringe on Monsanto's patents. Though Monsanto knows they can't win the case, they know it will hurt the farmers more in legal fees. We also meet a Latino family that shows that it's impossible for them to rationalize paying more money for produce when Burger King's Dollar Menu is more filling. Then there's Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, a actual non-factory farm. We see him killing chickens in a humane way as he tells the camera how the USDA tried to shut him down for slaughtering chickens in the open air.

Ultimately, Food Inc doesn't call for vegetarianism, but for greater transparency. This is something Americans should demand of any industry or institution.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Boring Movie

Two visually enjoyable films in this December's otherwise lacking line up are Avatar (December 18) and Sherlock Holmes (December 25). The bf and I trekked through the snowscape that was DC yesterday to a matinee showing of Avatar. It's basically everything the reviews say. Visually exciting, technically game-changing, but with an overtly anti-colonialist message and completely predictable plot. I really have little new to say about this beyond what Manohla Dargis and Dave Denby have already stated better. Avatar is ultimately memorable, though, the way that the first time you saw Star Wars or Jurassic Park was also memorable, simply for the thrill of seeing something so cool for the first time.

Sherlock Holmes is a different matter. What seemed to be a ribald historical/literary adaptation turned into James Bond of the 19th century. In other words, a thriller with a lot of improbable fighting sequences and technology. The only difference is that instead of pen-sized lock pickers, Sherlock Holmes features odorless fuels and invisible numbing agents. Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) also fights with his mind rather than his brawny Daniel Craig-like muscles. It’s pretty cool to see Holmes plan out his punches in his mind before he socks it to his opponents.

Sherlock Holmes also exemplifies the movie industry’s increasing reliance on CGI. Remember back in the day when historical films meant cool costumes (Pride and Prejudice, Marie Antoinette, Braveheart)? Now, historical films – especially those aimed at men – increasingly mean cool special effects (Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, 300). CGI is used well in Sherlock Holmes. The streets of London give off the right amount of gritty dampness. A half-built suspension bridge looms in several foreshadowing scenes before it’s featured in the final sequence.

Unfortunately, the special effects are the best parts of the movie. The story plot is a poor imitation of Dan Brown. Essentially, Lord Blackmore and his “secret society” (think, Freemasons), plot to take over England, the United States, and then the world. Holmes must stop him with his powerful deduction skills. Of course, we know that Holmes will be victorious, but we aren’t given the clues to follow along like we are in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short stories. Instead, there’s a reversal every five minutes to show explain otherwise inexplicable events. These get tiresome.

Holmes’ central problem is also supposed to be his lack of emotion. His practicality and logic get in the way of his feeling. So he can’t admit that he’s sad that Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is leaving him to get married, or that he has feelings for Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). While Downey does a good job coming across as an eccentric genius, the script is too thin for him to explore any other feelings, leaving the movie as more of a CGI enhanced action flick than historical drama.