So far, my favorite film this year is Christopher Nolanís Inception. Not only does it deliver all the action and thrills expected of a big budget summer blockbuster, but it has inspired endless debate among my friends and others who have seen it. It also officially moves Christopher Nolan near the head of an elite class of directors working today whose films I will definitely go see if their name is attached.

Case in point: my fiancÈ and I were in line at a sporting goods store. While the clerk was ringing up my t-shirts, my fiancÈ casually mentioned we had just seen the movie. Instantly, we started to enthusiastically recount memorable scenes: the floating figures in the hotel, the raid on the ice station and, of course, the ending.

For those who have not yet seen Inception (and what are you waiting for? It clearly deserves to be seen on the big screen), the plot is as follows:

Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is one rare type of thief- as he has the unique skill of being able to steal valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious of his victim during his or her dream state. Cobbís skill makes him valued among corporate giants trying to get one up on each other, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him his wife and child. Cobb is offered a last chance at redemption. He can be reunited with what remains of his family if he can pull off the never before tried feat of inception-meaning not to steal an idea from their target, but to plant one.

Spoiler alert!

(I would say donít read any further if you havenít seen it, but I know that is a moot point. Anyway, still see it if you get the chance.)

The film begins on an ominous note. Eerie strings play as the film fades to white. Soon, a ship appears out of the fog. Cut to a gumshoe, looking and speaking as if he has stepped straight out of a [[Mickey Spillane]] novel (fitting, since the setting is 1954), trying to hold himself together and fight off a case of severe sickness (ìall that waterî) in the shipís bathroom. It turns out the gumshoe, US Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are being ferried to one Shutter Island, rock island in the middle of Boston Harbor-one that houses an institution for the criminally insane.

So begins ìShutter Islandî, a haunting, challenging thriller by master filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Teddy and his partner are there seemingly to investigate the disappearance of a female patient-but Teddy has personal reasons of his own for taking the case. Though it appears at first that Teddy is a gifted investigator, it seems that every lead he follows only opens multiple other doors. Soon, Teddy is battling suspicious doctors, a downright sinister warden, a hurricane that descends on the island and, most critically, his own neurosis as he strives for the truth. As seeming clues lead nowhere and the twists in the case only multiply, Teddy soon begins to question everything around him, including his own sanity.