@trevelyan

I did not say that the movie was bad. I simply was not as impressed as you guys seem to be. In fact, one of the things that really bothered me about Inception I often find enjoyable in other movies: How it skillfully combines elements and ideas from many books, transposing or tweaking them enough that I couldn't quite identify the source anymore, to the point that it really itched. On the other hand, one thing that I never like, and for me was overwhelming in Inception was the impression of being in a third-person-perspective video game with a bunch of generic cardboard NPCs and 2-3 "quest" NPCs. Michael Caine is of course one of these "quest" NPCs. You see him as God; I see him as Quest NPC #1 who just stands there, waiting for you to bring back Item#23 so that he can give you a hint on how to proceed to the next plot point.

@brendan

Yes, Borges is one of the authors that Inception kept nagging me about, but also Lovecraft (his "Randolph Carter" series of novellas), and a number of SF authors (Dick, for sure, authors of the "jack-in" cyberpunk persuasion, etc.). Inception did not specifically push me to reread anything because I watched it abroad, and by the time I was back to my books other stimuli were driving my re-read urges (I re-read a lot, fragments or chapters). I guess our views on Inception are not *that* different. I think it's a pretty good movie that I would not mind seeing again. It's just that *something* that I could not quite put my finger on kept annoying me. Nothing like my strong negative reaction to any Tim Burton movie, but I remember being remember being annoyed throughout the movie, both times I watched it. :-)