2. Inception (2010)

Imagine you are Christopher Nolan, pitching Warner Bros. to give you millions to make Inception. How would you describe it? “Ocean’s Eleven meets The Matrix”? Maybe. The point is that Inception is a film where words fail to properly describe its brilliance because we know now what finely-executed masterclass it is. We have the benefit of making sense of Nolan’s otherwise incomprehensible screenplay because we’ve literally seen his vision.

Conceived by Nolan over a decade, but possible only after he’d worked on big budget productions, Inception is a heist set in the world of corporate espionage and in the more endless realms of dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio, at this stage matured as an actor whose involvement implies faith in the material, stars as the troubled extractor Cobb who just wants to get back home to his kids. Inception is, in hindsight, Nolan’s true coming-out party. It’s a cerebral genre-bender – including faint whispers of its original intentions as a horror movie – that rocked audiences en masse without intellectual property branding.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve seen Inception, go back to it. You might be taken surprise by clear, concise, and even playful it remains.