INCEPTION: such nonsense as dreams are made of

I'm not going to pretend that I grasped everything that was going on in INCEPTION. I understood about two thirds of the visuals and half of the dialogue. But I also figured out pretty early on that it's not necessary to comprehend the story to get a kick out of this film. INCEPTION is a ride and the sensible viewer will simply strap themselves in and enjoy the experience.

There's two ways to try and explain the plot. The long, involved, scene by scene description requires more memory than my computer possesses and one of those white boards where you can write names and draw arrows linking them to one another. That's fine for sci-fi nerds but for those readers of a normal disposition the second option of a bare bones summary may be preferable.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, a mysterious individual specialising in extracting secrets from the human subconscious by entering the sleeping victim's mind through their dreams. He's also got some personal issues relating to his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) who may or may not be dead. When he's hired by a wealthy Japanese businessman (Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea in the mind of a business rival (Cillian Murphy) he takes on his toughest challenge ever. Not only it is incredibly dangerous for him and his team of assistants (Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy) but it's made even more complicated by the recurring presence of Mal who clearly has some unresolved issues with her husband.
What unfolds defies simple or rational explanation. Suffice to say your disbelief should not just be suspended but also hung drawn and quartered then dragged through town by a pair of carthorses while jeering townsfolk throw rotten vegetables at it. By the end of it all you'll feel exhausted but also inordinately proud of yourself at having managed to keep up in a general, no-specific-detail, kind of way with just what the heck has been going on.
The exploration of reality versus dreams is a theme that Hollywood has visited before but director Christopher Nolan takes it to a new level of sophistication, challenging and confounding our perception of reality in much the same way that  his breakthrough movie "Memento." did with the idea of time as a linear concept that's always moving forward. 
The action (and there's a lot of it) is a satisfying blend of James Bond style stunts and stylish computer generated imagery. I'm not normally a big fan of cgi but Nolan employs it unobtrusively ( that's to say as unobtrusively as its possible to when literally turning Paris on its head for example) to advance the story rather than have it stop the story so we can marvel at how incredible it is that some computer boffins have found a new way to destroy large chunks of New York or LA.
Much like my own dreams I'm pretty sure that better than 75 per cent of INCEPTION is complete nonsense but I enjoyed it while I was experiencing it and I wasted several hours afterwards trying to make sense of the momentary fragments that I could remember.