Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 54- The Dark Knight Rises

2012 Film

8.6/10-imdb.com

88%-rottentomatoes.com

Release date: July 20, 2012 (USA)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Running time: 165 minutes

Prequel: The Dark Knight

Screenplay: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Description

Eight years after Harvey Dent's death, the Dent Act grants the Gotham City Police Department powers which nearly eradicate organized crime. Feeling guilty for covering up Dent's crimes, Police Commissioner James Gordon writes a resignation speech confessing the truth, but decides not to use it. Batman has disappeared; Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. Cat burglarSelina Kyle obtains Bruce's fingerprints from his home, seduces a congressman, then disappears. Selina hands Bruce's fingerprints to Phillip Stryver, an assistant to Bruce's business rival John Daggett, in hope of having her criminal record erased. Stryver double-crosses Selina, but she uses the congressman's stolen phone to alert the police to their location. Gordon and the police arrive to find the congressman, then pursue Stryver's men into the sewers while Selina flees. A masked man called Bane captures Gordon. Gordon escapes and is found by John Blake, a once-orphaned patrol officer who has deduced Batman's true identity from their similar backgrounds. Gordon promotes Blake to detective, with Blake reporting directly to him.

Wayne Enterprises is unprofitable after Bruce discontinued his fusion reactor project when he learned that the core could be weaponized. Later, Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange, using Bruce's fingerprints in a transaction that bankrupts Wayne. Alfred Pennyworth, concerned that Bruce has not moved on from being Batman, reveals to him that Rachel Dawes had intended to marry Dent before she died; Alfred then resigns in an attempt to dissuade Bruce. Fearing that Daggett, Bane's employer, would gain access to the reactor, Bruce asks Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate to take over his company. After being promised the software to erase her criminal record, Selina agrees to take Batman to Bane, but instead leads him into a trap. Bane reveals that he intends to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's mission to destroy Gotham with the League of Shadows remnant. He delivers a crippling blow to Batman's back, then takes him to a foreign, well-like prison where escape is virtually impossible. The inmates tell Bruce the story of Ra's al Ghul's child, born in the prison and cared for by a fellow prisoner before escaping—the only prisoner to have ever done so. Bruce assumes the child to be Bane.

Meanwhile, Bane lures Gotham police underground and collapses the exits. He kills Mayor Anthony Garcia and forces an abducted physicist, Dr. Leonid Pavel, to convert the reactor core into a nuclear bomb. Bane uses the bomb to hold the city hostage and isolate Gotham from the world. Using Gordon's stolen speech, Bane reveals the cover-up of Dent's crimes and releases the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary, initiating a revolution. The wealthy and powerful have their property expropriated, are dragged from their homes, and given show trialspresided over by Dr. Jonathan Crane, where any sentence means likely death with exile forcing the defendants to walk across the frozen bay.

After months of recovery and re-training, Bruce escapes from the prison and enlists Selina, Blake, Tate, Gordon, and Lucius Fox to help stop the bomb's detonation. While the police and Bane's forces clash, Batman defeats Bane, but Tate intervenes and stabs Batman, revealing herself to be Talia al Ghul, Ra's al Ghul's child. Talia escaped the prison aided by her fellow prisoner and protector, Bane. She plans to complete her father's work by detonating the bomb and destroying Gotham, but Gordon blocks her signal, preventing remote detonation. Talia leaves to find the bomb while Bane prepares to kill Batman, but Selina kills Bane using the Batpod. Batman pursues Talia with the Bat, an aircraft developed by Fox, hoping to bring the bomb back to the reactor where it can be stabilized. Talia's truck crashes, but she remotely destroys the reactor before dying. With no way to stop the detonation, Batman uses The Bat to haul the bomb over the bay, where it detonates.

In the aftermath, Batman is presumed dead and is honored as a hero. With Bruce also presumed dead, Wayne Manor is left to the city to become an orphanage, and Wayne's remaining estate is left to Alfred. Fox discovers that Bruce had fixed The Bat's autopilot, and Gordon finds the Bat-Signal refurbished. While visiting Florence, Alfred witnesses Bruce and Selina together. Blake resigns from the police force and inherits the Batcave.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 36- Memento

2000 Film

8.6/10-IMDb

92%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: January 20, 2001 (USA)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Screenplay: Christopher Nolan

Budget: 9 million USD

Description

A backwards sequence is shown. It starts with the Polaroid photograph of a dead man. As the sequence plays backwards the photo reverts to its undeveloped state, entering the camera before the man is shot in the head. This is followed by interspersed black-and-white and color sequences, with the black-and-white sequences taking place chronologically before the color sequences.

The black-and-white sequences begin with Leonard Shelby in a motel room speaking to an unnamed telephone caller who is not shown on-screen. Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to store recent memories, the result of an attack by two men. Leonard explains that he killed the attacker who raped and strangled his wife, but a second clubbed him and escaped. The police did not accept there was a second attacker, but Leonard believes he is called John with a last name starting with G. Leonard conducts his own investigation using a system of notes, Polaroid photos, and tattoos. As an insurance investigator, Leonard recalls one Sammy Jankis, also diagnosed with the same condition. Sammy's diabetic wife, who was not sure if his condition was genuine, repeatedly requested insulin injections to try to get him to break his act. He did not and as a result she fell into a coma and died.

The color sequences are shown in reverse chronological order. Leonard gets a tattoo, based on instructions to himself, of the license plate of John G. Finding a note in his clothes, he meets Natalie, a bartender who resents Leonard as he wears the clothes and drives the car of her boyfriend, Jimmy. After understanding his condition, she uses it to get Leonard to drive a man named Dodd out of town and offers to run the license plate to help his investigation. Meanwhile, Leonard meets with a contact, Teddy. Teddy helps with Dodd, but warns him about Natalie; however, Leonard has written on a photo of Teddy to not trust him. Natalie provides Leonard the driver's license, which shows a John Edward Gammell, Teddy's full name. Confirming Leonard's information on "John G" and his warnings, Leonard meets Teddy and drives him to an abandoned building, killing him as shown in the opening.

In the final black-and-white sequence, prompted by the caller, Leonard meets Teddy in the motel lobby. Teddy is an undercover officer and has found Leonard's "John G", Natalie’s boyfriend Jimmy Grantz, and directs Leonard to the same abandoned building outside of town. When Jimmy arrives, Leonard strangles him and takes a photo of the body. As it develops the black-and-white transitions to color, thus beginning the color sequences. Leonard swaps clothes with Jimmy, hearing Jimmy whisper "Sammy". As Leonard has only told the story of Sammy to those he has met, he doubts Jimmy is the attacker. Teddy arrives and asserts that Jimmy was John G but when Leonard is not convinced, Teddy reveals that together they had already found and Leonard had killed the real attacker over a year ago. Teddy claims that Leonard confused elements of his life with that of Sammy, who was a con man with no wife. Leonard's wife was diabetic, had survived the attack and was the one who died in the insulin overdose. Teddy accuses Leonard of creating an unsolvable puzzle to give himself purpose and since "John G" is a common name, he will continually forget, beginning his search again and that even Teddy himself has a "John G" name. After hearing Teddy's exposition, Leonard consciously burns the photograph of Jimmy's body, drives off in Jimmy's car and has Teddy's license plate number tattooed on himself as the one of the second attacker, which will lead to the events of Teddy's death.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 14- Inception

2010 Film

8.8/10-IMDb

86%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: July 13, 2010 (USA)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Screenplay: Christopher Nolan

Awards: Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Academy Award for Visual Effects, Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, Academy Award for Sound Mixing, BAFTA Award for Best Sound, American Society of Cinematographers Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases, Saturn Award for Best Director,MTV Movie Award for Best Scared-As-S**t Performance, Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture, Satellite Award for Best Cinematography, Satellite Award for Best Art Direction and Production Design, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Art Direction, Satellite Award for Best Original Score, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Editing, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Visual Effects, BAFTA Award for Best Production Design, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Sound, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Cinematography, San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Cinematography, ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards - Fantasy Film, Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Production Design, Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Action Movie, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Cinematography, Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Cinematography

Description

Dominick Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and business partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) perform corporate espionage using an experimental military technology to infiltrate the subconsciousof their targets and extract information while dreaming. Their latest target is Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe). Tiered "dream within a dream" strategies are used and dreamers awaken by a "kick" such as dying in the dream or falling. If the dreamer is the one who awakens, the dream "collapses". Each "extractor" carries a totem, a small object whose behavior only its owner can predict, used to determine whether a dreamer is in someone else's dream. Cobb's totem is implied to be a spinning top that spins perpetually in the dream state. The extraction fails when sabotaged by a memory of Cobb's deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). Saito reveals, after Cobb's and Arthur's associate sells them out, that he was actually auditioning the team to perform the difficult act of "inception": planting an idea in a person's subconscious while they sleep.

Saito wishes to break up the energy conglomerate of his ailing competitor Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite) by planting the idea in his son and heir Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to disintegrate his father's company. Should Cobb succeed, Saito would use his influence to clear a murder charge against Cobb, so he can return to the United States and his children. Cobb accepts the offer and assembles his team: Eames (Tom Hardy), a conman and identity forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who concocts the powerful sedative for a stable "dream within a dream" strategy; Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student tasked with designing the labyrinth of the dream landscapes; and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Saito accompanies so he knows whether Cobb and his team succeeded.

When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney and his body is flown back to Los Angeles, the team share the flight with Robert Fischer. Cobb sedates him, bringing him into the shared dream. At each stage, the member of the team generating the dream stays behind to initiate the "kick", the means by which they will be able to awaken from the dream layer below, while the other members sleep within the dream to travel a level deeper. In the first level, Yusuf's rainy downtown dream, the team abducts Fischer; however, Fischer's trained subconscious projections attack, wounding Saito severely. Eames temporarily takes the appearance of Fischer's godfather, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), to suggest Fischer reconsider his father's will. Yusuf drives the team in a van as they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by Arthur, where the team recruit Fischer, convincing him his kidnapping was orchestrated by Browning and essentially turning him against his own subconscious defences by convincing him that they are his defence. In the third level, a snowy mountain fortress dreamed by Eames, Fischer is told they are in Browning's subconscious, but they are really going deeper into Fischer's. Yusuf, under assault by trained projections, initiates his kick too soon by driving off a bridge, removing the gravity of Arthur's dream world and causing an avalanche in Eames' dream, a kick in which all missed. Arthur improvises a new kick using an elevator that will be synchronized with the van hitting the water, while the team in Eames' dream races to finish the job before the new round of kicks.

Due to the effects of heavy sedation and multi-layered dreaming, death during this mission will result in entering Limbo, dream space of unknown content where the dreamer could be trapped. Elapsed time in each dream level is roughly twenty times greater than in the level above it; in Limbo, the deepest level of all, the planned ten hours of outer-world time would be experienced as almost two centuries. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he spent "fifty years" with Mal in Limbo constructing a world from their shared memories while seemingly growing old together. Returning to the waking world, they found less than three hours had passed, but Mal, convinced she was still dreaming, committed suicide, trying to persuade Cobb to do so by retroactively incriminating him in her death. He fled the U.S. and left his children behind, ostensibly in the care of his father-in-law, Prof. Stephen Miles (Michael Caine).

Saito succumbs to his wounds, and Cobb's projection of Mal sabotages the plan by killing Fischer, sending them both into Limbo.^[13] Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to find Fischer and Saito, while Eames remains on his dream level to set up a kick by rigging the fortress with explosives. Cobb confronts his projection of Mal, who tries convincing him to stay in Limbo. Cobb refuses and confesses that he was responsible for Mal's suicide: having convinced her to leave Limbo by using inception to plant the idea in her mind that the world they had been living in for fifty years was not real, and hence the need to kill themselves in order to return to the real world, once back in the real world she continued to believe dying would wake her. Mal attacks Cobb but Ariadne shoots her. Through his confession, Cobb attains catharsis, choosing to remain in Limbo to search for Saito. Ariadne pushes Fischer off a balcony, bringing him back up to the mountain fortress, where he enters a safe room to discover and accept the planted idea: that his father wishes him to be his "own man", and that splitting up the conglomerate might not be a radical notion.

All team members other than Cobb and Saito ride the synchronized kicks back to reality: Ariadne jumps off a balcony in Limbo, Eames detonates the explosives in the fortress, Arthur blasts an elevator containing the team's sleeping bodies up an elevator shaft, and the van in Yusuf's dream hits the water. Cobb eventually finds an aged Saito and the two remember their arrangement, presumably shooting themselves and awakening to outer-world reality on the airplane. Saito honors the arrangement and Cobb passes through U.S. customs once the plane lands in Los Angeles. Before reuniting with his children, Cobb tests reality with his spinning top, but he turns away to greet them before observing the results.

. Wikipedia

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Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 6- The Dark Knight

2008 Film

9/10-IMDb

94%-Rotten Tomatoes

Release date: July 18, 2008 (USA)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Prequel: Batman Begins

Sequel: The Dark Knight Rises

Screenplay: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Description

In Gotham City, The Joker and his accomplices rob a mob-owned bank. The accomplices kill each other off one by one in a sequence masterminded by the Joker, who escapes alone with all the money.

Batman and Lt. Jim Gordon decide to include the new district attorney, Harvey Dent, in their plan to eradicate the mob. Although Dent is dating Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne is impressed with his idealism and offers to throw him a fundraiser. Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and The Chechen hold a videoconference with Lau, a Chinese accountant who has hidden their funds and fled to Hong Kong. The Joker interrupts the meeting, warning that Batman is unhindered by jurisdiction. He offers to kill Batman for half their money, but the mob bosses refuse, and Gambol puts a bounty on him. The Joker kills Gambol and takes control of his men. Batman captures Lau and delivers him back to Gotham to testify against the Joker and the mob.

The Joker announces that people will die each day unless Batman reveals his identity. He then kills Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and the judge presiding over the mob trials. He also targets Dent at the fundraiser, but Bruce hides Dent. Gordon foils the Joker's assassination attempt on Mayor Garcia, apparently sacrificing himself in the process. Bruce plans to reveal his identity, but Dent instead names himself as Batman to protect the truth. Dent is taken into protective custody and pursued by the Joker across the city; Batman rushes to Dent's aid. Gordon, who faked his death, helps apprehend the Joker and is promoted to Commissioner.

That night, Dent and Rachel disappear. Batman interrogates the Joker and discovers that Dent and Rachel are held in two separate buildings filled with explosives. The Joker reveals their locations, and Batman goes to Rachel's, only to realize that the Joker has tricked him into finding Dent moments before both buildings explode, killing Rachel and scarring half of Dent's face. The Joker detonates a bomb in the police station and escapes with Lau.

Coleman Reese, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, deduces Batman's true identity and plans to reveal it. The Joker kills Lau and The Chechen, then threatens to bomb a hospital unless Reese is killed. Gordon and Bruce protect Reese, who changes his mind. The Joker visits Dent in the hospital and convinces him to seek revenge. The Joker then blows up the hospital and escapes with hostages.

Dent starts to go after people responsible for Rachel's death, deciding their fates by flipping a coin. He kills Maroni and a cop who had helped kidnap Rachel. It is revealed that the Joker rigged two ferries with explosives to escalate chaos; one ferry is full of citizens, the other full of prison inmates and guards. He then gives the passengers of each ferry the choice to blow the other up before midnight — otherwise, both ferries will explode. The passengers ultimately refuse.

Batman asks a reluctant Lucius Fox to use a city-wide tracking prototype device to find the Joker; Fox agrees, but says he will resign immediately afterward. The Joker dresses up hostages as his men, luring Gordon's SWAT team to strike them. Batman fights off the SWAT team and the Joker's men, then rescues the hostages. Batman apprehends the Joker, but the Joker gloats that he has won, as Gotham will lose hope once Dent's rampage becomes public. The SWAT team arrives to take the Joker into custody.

Dent lures Gordon to the building where Rachel died and holds Gordon's family hostage. Batman confronts Dent, who judges the fates of himself, Batman, and Gordon's son with three coin flips. He shoots Batman, spares himself, then flips again to determine the boy's fate. Batman, who is wearing body armor, tackles Dent off the building, killing him and saving the boy.^[13] Batman then convinces Gordon to frame him for the murders so that Dent will remain a symbol of hope for the city. Gordon destroys the Bat-Signal and launches a manhunt for the Batman. Alfred Pennyworth burns a letter written by Rachel to Bruce announcing her engagement to Dent, and Fox watches the signal tracker self-destruct.

. Wikipedia

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