To go into the cinema knowing next to nothing about a film is a rare thing indeed these days; even rarer if the film in question is one of the biggest of the year, both in length and cost (148 minutes and $200 million respectively), with a huge cast of familiar and, in general, really really ridiculously good-looking stars. Yet though Inception is perhaps the summer’s most anticipated film, hardly any plot details have been available in the run-up to its release. The trailers have been cryptic, the posters more so, while the writer/director Christopher Nolan has refused to reveal anything remotely resembling a spoiler in interviews, smiling that he likes to ‘keep things a little close to the chest.’ Such extraordinary secrecy is with very good reason – not only does it ensure that the film itself is a surprise (and an extraordinary one at that), but the plot is so ambitious, so utterly balls-to-the-wall ridiculous, that any attempt to explain it would send you laughing from the room. At the risk of sounding like a tagline, it needs to be seen to be believed.

As such, there is little alternative for this review to be anything other than ambiguous – perhaps frustratingly so. Nevertheless, to provide a plot synopsis would be to do a severe injustice to the film itself, so, to put it in the vaguest possible terms: Inception centres on dreams and their connection with reality. This initial concept is one that allows for seemingly limitless invention from Nolan, and he embraces this with one of the most ambitious and complex scripts in recent years, piling on twists and complications from the first frame to the last. Such complexity is a hugely risky endeavour, as at any point there is the possibility that the film might lose the audience completely, and it is to Nolan’s credit that we never feel too perplexed. Indeed, he seems to have an innate trust of, and respect for, his audience, and never slows the plot down to make sure everyone’s keeping up (though Ellen Page’s Ariadne is perhaps a little too blatant in her role as a surrogate audience, there to have the plot explained to her). It’s intensely cerebral, and insists that the viewer keeps their wits about them. However, the film is by no means a dry or academic affair, and while it explores fascinating ideas and themes, it never skimps on the spectacle. Inception contains some truly groundbreaking action scenes, including a gravity-defying fist-fight similar (though superior) to those in The Matrix and an epic climax at a snowy mountain base, reminiscent of Bond at his best.

Indeed, Christopher Nolan rams his film full of cinematic, literary and artistic references – from Greek mythology to 2001: A Space Odyssey, M. C. Escher to Edith Piaf – and seems happy to acknowledge the debt this film owes to others. Perhaps most unexpected are the similarities that Inception bears to both Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York and Scorsese’s recent Shutter Island; indeed, Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in the latter is remarkably similar to his role here, though Nolan has coaxed a marginally superior performance from him. He is effortlessly stylish yet internally fractured as Dom Cobb, a father just trying to get back to his children, and it is in his hands that the film becomes more than just a hyper-intelligent action flick. A common complaint of Nolan’s films is that they lack emotion, with a coldness reminiscent of Kubrick, yet while such a comparison is, in many ways, highly complementary, it falls down with Inception. One of the crucial reasons this film is Nolan’s best is because, while he has retained his tendency to produce a carefully calibrated and precisely engineered film, he has finally embraced the more raw, emotional punch his previous work lacked. Thanks both to his script and the powerful performances of DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard, the film becomes a surprisingly and gratifyingly moving experience.

If nothing else, Inception will go down as one of the riskiest endeavours ever undertaken by a filmmaker. Fresh off the record-breaking success of The Dark Knight, Nolan became the golden child at Warner Brothers, and was finally allowed to develop what had been his dream project (in more ways than one). Yet it could so easily have all fallen apart, collapsing into a self-indulgent, incoherent vanity project under a director drunk on success. Happily, nothing could be further from the truth. That the ideas behind the film have obsessed him since he was sixteen says a lot for their complexity and, more importantly, their quality, and the decades he has spent developing the script have clearly paid off. Challenging and often surreal ideas are presented far more clearly than they might have been, as Nolan consistently displays a steady-handed grip on the material. The audience is never allowed to be too bewildered, and much of the credit for this must also go to the editor, Lee Smith, whose ability to find coherence amongst the four simultaneous set-pieces at the film’s climax is nothing short of a miracle.

Inception is outstanding in almost every way conceivable, from Hans Zimmer’s brutally dramatic and modern score to Wally Pfister’s magnificent cinematography, which makes the most of the astonishing and hugely varied locations that the film travels to. No-one makes a false step amongst the ensemble cast, all of whom deliver fantastic work, with Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy proving particularly impressive. Ultimately, however, this is Nolan’s film, having written and directed it with apparently limitless creative freedom. The world can finally have unfiltered access to his vision, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen. Although it owes huge debts to a vast number of different films and works of art, and though it even embraces genre to some extent – it is, in many ways, a heist film, though by no means a conventional one – the greatest and most striking virtue of Inception is its fierce originality. It functions at once as a superior thriller and a self-referential tribute to the infinite possibilities that face a true artist. Against all odds, and in a summer of well over twenty remakes and sequels, Christopher Nolan has delivered a phenomenal action film of extraordinary intelligence. There aren’t enough superlatives in the world.

Lebanon, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and representative of a new vein in Israeli cinema alongside the excellent Waltz with Bashir, is in a tricky position. A highly personal account of the director’s experience of the Lebanon war, it makes no claim to impartiality (and nor should it need to). Consequently, it has attracted some controversy, both from those who claim it is a damning portrayal of the Israeli army, and those who decry the film as exaggerated and untrue. In reality, the film is a visceral and claustrophobic condemnation of war in general, rather than any specific conflict. Phalangists and phosphorous aside, it could be set in any modern war.

Filmed entirely in the tight confines of an Israeli tank, the film follows a tank crew through a day in Lebanon. We sit in on tense conversations between the crew, receive icy radio orders from afar and stare down the tanks sights with Shliumik, the gunner and almost silent protagonist. It’s not war, but rather a perception of war distorted through a periscope- the outside world is a fiction.

At times, the film seems on the brink of degenerating into horror. The crew are uniformly out of their depth, unaware of the politics of the conflict, and scared. The tanks interior steadily deteriorates with the situation, and the final panic stricken scenes suggest a nightmare.

More complete explorations of the Lebanon war exist, and the film is by no means unique in its portrayal of conflict. But Moaz has nevertheless crafted a harrowing slice of fear. To view the film as anything more would be to put words in its mouth.

The British Museum’s Reading Room is an imposing space. It takes quite an impressive exhibition to live up to that high domed structure. And the latest collection of objects to occupy the space is nothing if not impressive, including pieces by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Da Vinci and Titian. A collaboration with the renowned Uffizi Gallery, the exhibition features original, restored drawings by the masters of Italian Renaissance Art.

What is first apparent about the exhibition is that it has been designed with a certain intimacy in mind. A one way maze through the circular space prevents excessive over crowding around the more popular pieces and encourages visitors to examine each drawing. More importantly, an intimacy is achieved simply by the fact that as an observer, you are allowed to stand extremely close to the sketches, separated only by an unobtrusive glass frame.

This means that each crack and fold and even the small holes pierced in the paper used to “trace” the sketches are visible. All of this lends a personal aspect to the exhibition, giving the viewer a chance to put aside the superhuman status of the featured artists and instead see their work as the result of practice, error and redraft. Looking at the pencil studies of hands, the repositioning of limbs and the occasional erased line, many of which were never meant to be seen, you feel as though you are seeing the raw secret of each artist’s talent.

The exhibition is full of interesting and noteworthy pieces. There are many sketches which include writing, such as indications of the colours to be used in a finished painting or Leonardo Da Vinci’s descriptions of the curious tortoise-like war machines he had designed. There are also sketches of women by Botticelli which foreshadow his iconic painting, The Birth of Venus. These drawings are able to humanize a work of art that had become iconic and far from detracting from the masterpiece, they add an extra dimension.

You may find yourself looking far closer at these sketches than any great masterpiece and you’ll find that each piece has a sense of fragility and humanity. And although the British Museum has gathered an extensive collection of drawings, brimming with sketches made by numerous artists, mediums and depicting different subjects, this endearing frailty is the common theme. Simultaneously impressive, subtle and deeply affecting, this is a very different experience than that offered by most exhibitions and it is undeniably worthwhile.

Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings is at the British Museum until July 25. £12 fully price, £10 concessions

‘As great as you are man you’ll never be greater than yourself’

So Dylan sung on ‘High Water’. I guess this sums up the aging Bob Dylan. He is the most iconic figure in popular culture who is still actually alive, and this brings its problems. While other icons become posthumously idolised, ol’ Bobo just trundles on, reminding everyone how good he used to be, and how bad by comparison he is now. This would most probably be the case even if his live shows were actually all right, but, combined with his penchant for massacring his most beloved classics, it wasn’t without some reservations that I headed to Kent to see one of my all-time idols.

And in the wake of his performance, the usual rhetoric about how Dylan should give up and stop trying has resurfaced. However, having actually now seen him, I’ve realised how unfair it is – at least nowadays. Sure, in the past, for example on the much derided Budokan, he did try his best to destroy the spirit of his songs with sax solos, pan pipes, and gospel choirs. But in actual fact, his band is very good, and from swinging numbers like ‘Honest With Me’ to the heartfelt ‘Simple Twist of Fate,’ the expected instrumental abomination that I’d anticipated never transpired.

‘Christmas In The Heart thankfully didn’t feature’

This may have something to do with my second point – that is recent stuff has actually been… good. The last decade saw him produce some of the better albums of his career, again, with some of the best backing bands he’s had since Blonde on Blonde. He hasn’t recently found God, or headed into gospel, or ’80s production, or featured cameos from Slash. So he wasn’t tempted to go back to all of that. Playing a ‘new’ one meant actually a good song, and not a travesty. Moreover he eschewed tracks from his latest release Together Through Life for the better Modern Times and Love and Theft, which was welcome. Oh, and also Christmas In The Heart thankfully didn’t feature.

Otherwise, he just played some of his all time best songs. There were notable omissions, such has ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, and in fact he only played one song from Blood on the Tracks (which, as some of you may know, is an album I quite like…). But the band’s setup lent it more to the fuller sound of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and even outside of that the setlist was well-chosen – with even an outing for bootleg ‘Blind Willie McTell’, a brilliant song and the sole representative of his ’80s repertoire (thankfully).

‘He puts on a show which is as good as it can be’

Most of the criticisms of Dylan’s live shows nowadays seem to be centred around his singing voice, which is admittedly dire. But it’s not as if he was ever particularly good, and at least he knows it, so doesn’t try to hit the long notes. Instead, he tends to split each line roughly halfway down the middle, and mutter words at the beginning and end of the bar. It makes singing along hard, and only for the encore of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Forever Young’ did the crowd really get involved. But Dylan his just doing what he can, and in fact the crowd were very sterile, especially for a festival (rather than theatre) audience, and they could’ve got more involved if they wanted to. Incidentally, another bonus of the recent songs is that they were written with his voice in mind, so the effect is less noticeable.

So I thought it was great. But what about that perennial problem? As great as he was live, he’ll never be greater than the folk singer who made waves on the Civil Rights march to Washington, or greater than the rock-star who showed a proverbial two fingers to the folkies at Newport, or greater than the man who rolled into a New York studio in 1974 and laid down some of the most beautiful recordings of his career. How can he confront this? As Dylan himself continues, ‘I told him I didn’t really care.’ And he doesn’t. He doesn’t spend his live shows trying to recapture that anger, that beauty, that emotion. There’s no point, as he would fail (mainly because his voice is shot). So instead of worrying about it, he puts on a show which is as good as it can be. It doesn’t have the emotional investment of Mumford & Sons (‘this is the most people I’ve seen ever’) – that would clearly be disingenuous. It doesn’t have the attitude of Ray Davies (‘I’ll play all night if I want to!’) because frankly, it’s Kent, and Dylan probably has better things to do. All he needs is a cowboy hat, minimal amounts of chat, and, as the crowd carry the chorus of ‘Just Like A Woman’, a wry, knowing, but kinda creepy smile (a bit like a waxwork in a warm glasshouse). He knows all too well that he can no longer sing it properly, but the crowd can, and will. Of course, they might not, but then, either way, he doesn’t really care. And if you take a similar attitude, then you might actually just enjoy yourself as much as he does.

Elvis Costello has had to adjust with age. Known for his New Wave snarl, as the years have passed he has changed his tune significantly, working with everyone from Allen Toussaint to the Brodksy Quartet. Therefore, seeing him solo, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Normally he is backed up by a band of some description, be it the Attractions, the Imposters, the Confederates, or any number of other groups, and much of his work seems dependent on his backing. Indeed, one of his stand-out albums, This Year’s Model, is notable for its incredible drumming, basswork, keyboards… in short, everything that Costello didn’t have when he came to the New Theatre.

However, seated among one of the most middle-class audiences of my life, it is clear that Costello knows how to play to his strengths. For starters, he ignored large sections of his back-catalogue, including the entirety of This Year’s Model. Armed with an array of guitars, he has perfected his troubadour act, impishly bouncing around the stage, tilting his hat, taking about twenty bows, the whole bit. More importantly though, his stripped down set reveals the strength of his songwriting, with opener ‘Red Shoes’ rendered in a much more delicate manner than on his seminal debut My Aim Is True. Already poignant songs such as ‘Alison’ and ‘Either Side Of The Same Town’ become even sadder, and playful songs like ‘Sulphur to Sugarcane’ become more fun. His father was a big band leader, and his influence becomes more apparent on Costello’s performances as he grows older – at one point he introduces a ‘rock song’, before qualifying it as what would be a rock song ‘in the twenties’, unplugging his acoustic and performing ‘Slow Drag With Josephine’ without any amplification whatsoever. There was even a whistling solo.

But while Costello could have kept the whole show at the same comfortable and homely tone, he did reveal some of the edge which defined his early career. The very next song he even plugged in his electric (*gasps*) guitar to play breakthrough single ‘Watching The Detectives’, and rediscovers his snarl, accompanied by an oppressive, distorted, and effects-laden guitar line. It nearly collapsed underneath its own weight as Costello arguably had a bit too much fun with his delay pedal, but given how easily he could have impishly bounced through his whole set, a touch of the more ambitious was certainly welcome. It’s what sets him apart from other singer-songwriters with acoustic guitars. Of which it’s fair to say there are a few.

Typical. The music industry spends the best part of four decades seeking out ways to record the crispest, clearest sound. The research is exhaustive; the technology polished and perfected; the gizmos and gadgetry ever more intricate. How, then, can it not be technological blasphemy for a ramshackle bunch of teenagers from Chicago to come along and record a great album on outdated equipment in a basement?

Thus are Smith Westerns; four lo-fi garage-rockers whose jangling, disjointed sound has already signed them to small-time scourers of the Illinois underground scene, HoZac Records. A band that embraces, nay, exploits the ‘unwanted’ scuzz and noise, and hurls in a jumble of rusty ‘60s rock-and-roll influences and fraying glam-rock inspiration.

The eponymous first album kicks off with the fuzzy ‘Dreams’, a clanging, sing-along number oozing adolescent desire, and the laddish ‘Boys Are Fine’, characterised by nigh-on indecipherable lyrics and a wailing, testosterone-fuelled chorus. From there, the album progresses to ‘Gimme Some Time’, which sounds like the Velvet Underground performing in a phone-box; this whirlwinds into ‘Girl In Love’, the insistent drumming and sparse guitar work of which evokes T. Rex’s ‘Bang A Gong’.

The sixth track is surely the standout, ‘Tonight’. Like most other Smith Westerns songs, it sounds like it’s played from inside a vat of crude oil, and behind the practically inaudible lyrics lies a thrusting but tuneful guitar riff and forceful drumming. On ‘The Glam Goddess’, lead singer Cullen Omori’s voice resonates with molasses-sweet, youthful yearning, and the record concludes with the similarly-themed clamour of ‘My Heart’.

Smith Westerns’ clattering, blaring din is bringing back some tarnished glitz and glamour to the rock and roll scene. Rarely do you hear a new band with such an idiosyncratic, primitive and deliberately blemished sound, and seldom have I related so much to an act on first listen. Smith Westerns juxtapose the unsolicited and pervasive with the charming and addictive, and the result is an album of abrasive, coarse beauty.

At some point in the last decade, a tradition emerged amongst film critics: every time a new Woody Allen film comes along, speculation must be made as to whether it is ‘a return to form’ or ‘a colossal disappointment signalling the irreversible cinematic demise of the wit and intelligence of a once great filmmaker’. And, given the astonishing rate at which Allen churns out new films (his newest, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, premiered at Cannes in May, before Whatever Works was even released here), the tradition is pretty much an annual one. It’s also a tradition which requires hysterical overreaction from critics, whether it’s orgiastically fawning over the decent but unremarkable Vicky Christina Barcelona or gleefully condemning Cassandra’s Dream to be the worst film of Allen’s career. In reality, while Woody Allen seems destined never to reach the heights of Annie Hall, Manhattan and Love and Death again (he’s certainly had some recent clunkers – Scoop didn’t even get a theatrical release in the UK), the 74-year-old writer/director still produces the occasional gem. It’s gratifying, then, to find that Whatever Works is clever, extremely funny and even a little moving. Just don’t call it a return to form.

Larry David stars as Boris Yelnikoff, a retired quantum physicist and self-proclaimed genius, whose intelligence has led him to attempt suicide in despair at life’s utter pointlessness. Having failed to kill himself (the jump out of the window landing him with a permanent limp instead), Boris leaves his wife and instead passes the time either in a café, delivering misanthropic and pessimistic monologues to his patient friends, or in the park, angrily instructing and berating young children on how to play chess. At this point, a 21-year-old girl from the Deep South called Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood) appears on his doorstep, and after much pleading, he eventually allows her to live with him. If the plot sounds like old school Woody Allen, that’s because it is – he wrote the script in the 1970s as a vehicle for Zero Mostel as Boris, but following Mostel’s death, the script was shelved until now. As a result, the film has a strangely timeless feel to it, and, aside from the occasional topical references, wouldn’t look out of place sitting amongst his work of thirty-five years ago. It’s knowingly farcical, fully embracing its caricatures of both Southerners and New Yorkers, and as such is at odds with some of his more serious recent work.

Although the only acting he’s known for is the improvisation of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is impressive as Boris, and it is a testament to David that the character remains thoroughly sympathetic and likeable, despite his continual condescension and verbal abuse towards others. He occasionally addresses the audience directly in a manner reminiscent of Woody himself in Annie Hall, and, despite David’s skill, one can’t help but wonder why the director didn’t take the role himself. He’s disappeared behind the camera for most of his recent films, and they are that much weaker for his onscreen absence. Still, the rest of the cast hold the film together admirably, especially Evan Rachel Wood, whose naïve Melodie could well have been an irritating presence. The romance that soon blossoms between her and Boris is also particularly well handled, neatly avoiding any notions of creepiness – no mean feat when she is young enough to be his granddaughter.

It’s also amusing to see life imitating art here, as since writing the script all those decades ago, Allen fell in love with his then-partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, despite a thirty-four year age gap. His defence of their relationship was simply to say, “The heart wants what the heart wants. There’s no logic to these things.” The film continues this philosophy rather nicely, instructing its audience to find happiness and love wherever you can – “whatever works”, as Boris keeps repeating – and championing New York, with its liberal-minded inhabitants, as the place to do it. Yet if this sounds in any way sentimental, that would be doing the film a disservice; Allen’s sharp script never tires of reminding us of life’s pointlessness and the utter meaningless of each person’s existence, and it’s in the face of such depressing nothingness that we’re told to grab life and love while we can. Nihilism has never been so uplifting.