If this came out today..

I agree that Fincher and Nolan are great directors. What I meant by my original post is that they have name recognition. They're popular among the type of movie goers who should have liked Vanilla Sky. If this had come out a decade later or had a trendier director attached it would be 'top 250' material, without a doubt.

Inception's world, for all its convoluted rules, didn't spark my imagination much. I've heard many interpretations, one of which is that it's a reflection of film itself etc, and while all the various interpretations are fine, they seem quite watered down thematically, compared to Vanilla Sky. (Just my opinion.)

Vanilla Sky deals with a hyper realistic virtual reality system that expands the users dreams and subconscious space after death. Before Abre Lis Ojos, had we ever seen anything like this on film? This is also only the tip of the iceberg too. Consequences, ego-death, materialism, etc - the list is long and rich, as I'm sure you know. For repeated viewings, I've found very few movies as rich with ideas as this one.

Those days when such concepts were rare, this film had still managed to collect over 100M domestically. So I believe when it released it was popular and equally liked but as Tom Cruise's movie star image overshadows his image as an actor so mostly movie goers like to quote his trendy films instead if those films which were risks and still were great hits at their times.