Christopher Nolan’s personal pet projects have amazed, mystified, and baffled moviegoers since his 2001 film “Memento”. He specializes in mind-bending, smartly crafted cinematic wonders that demand repeat viewings and admiration for the man who could concoct them. Roaring into the current summer movie climate of sequels and underachievers, Nolan’s newest work, “Inception”, is no different. It’s unique, twisted, and just might be the best movie of the year.

If you have seen any of the promotional marketing for “Inception”, you know the PR department was secretive to the point of confusion. Many were intrigued by the twisty visuals or the wide-ranging cast roster, but few knew going in what the real story was. So what the heck is “Inception” about exactly? It is at its heart a heist movie, though there are no banks robbed and no hostages taken. Instead of plundering safes, the targets here are people’s minds, robbing them not of money, but of their free will when the mind is most vulnerable. The film follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, in his second mind-bender this year), a man who performs corporate espionage with the help of some near-future biotechnology that allows him to enter the dream worlds of others. Usually, Cobb tries to steal ideas hidden in the recesses of the person’s mind, but when offered the chance to redeem his troubled past and return to his children, he assembles an elite team of mind hackers to perform “inception”. That is, enter the dream state and try to plant an idea instead.

Enigmatic, dense, and visually intense are just a few words one would use to describe “Inception”. This sentiment is compounded by the fact that the concept of the film is complex and multi-faceted. This is a movie that equals “The Dark Knight” in length, and requires the first hour of the film to set up the ground rules of the world you have just entered.

Some have said that the story lacks pathos, that while we are on the edge of our seats with suspense, we don’t really care what happens to Cobb or any of the other players. They’d be right, to an extent, but when a story is this well done, sometimes you don’t need to be entirely emotionally invested in the characters to be able to be invested in the outcome.

The brilliance of the film emerges over the course of the inception job, as Cobb and his crew attempt to break up a conglomerate by planting seeds of doubt in an energy heir’s mind. To do this, the “architect” (Ellen Page) builds levels of dreams as if they were a video game, and the team must enter deeper and deeper levels of their target’s subconscious. Each level, however, operates under ever-expanding time constraints. If the first level of a dream spans 30 seconds, the next spans several hours, the next spans weeks, and the next spans years. By the time you get to the meat of the third act, Nolan is juggling so many narrative balls that it’s an impressive, exciting feat to watch.

And what a feat to watch this movie is. The commercials have shown snippets of some of the amazing, mind-bending special effects, but they really are great to see on the big screen. Nolan was essentially given carte blanche here thanks to his Batman success, and spends his money on some lavish action sequences, several trips around the globe, and manipulations of time that perfectly compliment the mechanics set up in the narrative. Yet, the visual interest that gets you to the cineplex is by no means the feature here. This is a story-driven movie with some excellent eye candy for good measure, the complete opposite of most summer movies.

With “Inception”, Christopher Nolan has crafted yet another unique world that demands repeat viewings to fully grasp what you just saw. It is a daring gamble of a movie: a self-contained amalgamation of psychological thriller, heist movie, and action epic that makes you question what is real. It– like the best dreams– may not make sense at times, but it stays with you long after you’ve come to. Is it time to plant an idea into Oscar voter’s minds?