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30 of the best dream sequences from movies, in under 2 minutes

“Dreams feel real when we’re in them,” Leonardo DiCaprio says in Inception. “It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” A masterfully crafted dream sequence does the same. It entrances viewers with something beautiful or terrifying or unbelievable, only to jerk them awake and force them back into reality.

Film editor Gabriel Adelman made a supercut of some of cinema’s absolute best dream sequences, from American Beauty to Terminator 2. In under two minutes, the video speeds through 30 dream scenes that span more than 50 years, with voiceovers from Walking Life, Spellbound, and Inception. It’s a mesmerizing trip through some of the most iconic dreams in movie history and feels almost as surreal as the terrifying dream in Aliens.

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