"Finally saw it. Good movie ((possible spoilers))"

Written By: LuvBooks

I didn't really "get" the movie until afterwards when I started reading some of the IMDb reviews and board comments. I had heard that the film was done "backwards" but it didn't really click for me until I read a bit more. The movie is engaging and it makes you wonder what's going to happen next. In terms of the climax, lots of things cleared up by the time the black-n-white (forward) and the color (backwards) met up. That's when the movie really started making sense.

There were some gross moments that turned my stomach, but other than that, the violence was tolerable. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

Oh,since I did mark it spoiler, I believe that the cop was telling the truth about everything. For a few reasons, one of which was Lenny's memory of giving his wife an insulin shot. By the end, it seemed to me that he made up the story about Jenkins in order to "deal" with his role in his wife's death. And then his monologue at the end where he pretty much set up the cop so that he would be the one he went after was creepy. Lenny was pretty dangerous, and if this were real life, it would be scary for someone like him to actually be on the loose.

"So THIS is why everyone loves Nolan."

Written By: Brian Nallick

I have heard people rave about this movie since it came out.
Every great director has at least one defining film.
Speilberg had....lots of them. (Poltergeist, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones etc...)
Cameron had Aliens and Terminator.
So I was anxious to see where Nolan really established himself in Hollywood.
And....
Let's get to it.

The good.
Excellent acting.
Spot on pacing.
Great score.
It's one of the more artful films I've seen in recent memory.
It has a ton of twists and turns.
How the story is told is simply masterful, I can see a lot of Inception in this movie.

The bad?
People may be thrown by the way the story is told but if you can't pay attention then don't even bother trying to watch this movie.
That's it for the bad really.

As far as art movies go or even crime, thriller movies go.
This one is about as perfect as it gets.
Stunning from first frame to last.
Memento comes.....highly recommended.

"Excellent Film"

Written By: Lola

Everything about this movie is perfect. It's suspenseful and keeps you guessing until the very end. One of Christopher Nolan's best--if not THE best--films. I highly recommend it.

"Inception gets the Pub, Memento started it."

Written By: Lawhistorian

Mostly Christopher Nolan gets pub for being the man behind Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but with the popularity of Inception people, are starting to get a handle on the dark twisty directing style that is really his bread and butter. Also, seeing as I am actually unsure yet as to whether I will pay to go see Inception, I decided to temper that by retro reviewing this one.

Memento was not the first movie he directed, but it is the movie that really put him on the map and was his first movie to actually have a cast and a budget. (even though it was a small one) He made some smart casting decisions by casting the always great Guy Pierce as Lenny and surrounding him with a cast of solid supportive character actors. Oddly, he snagged two of the cast from the previous years Sci/Fi smash the Matrix. Carrie-Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano both had major roles in that movie, and are the two major supporting actors in Memento. They both give excellent performances. Also, you can see a cameo by Jorja Fox in this film as Lenny's wife when she is shown in the flashback scenes. She is more commonly recognized in her role on CSI as Sara Sidle. The acting will not be a disappointment in this film which is important since this is primarily a character and dialogue driven film. Guy Pierce particularly sells this film with his continually ability to make the fact his characters memories keep disappearing believable. The acting however, is not what makes this movie distinctive as a Christopher Nolan vehicle.

What Christopher Nolan loves to do, and does well, is winding a plot that makes it difficult to separate the reality from the fiction. He is striving for more than just a simple plot hook with a twist at the end. He is trying to craft a movie that makes the audience completely engage with the characters, yet been completely in the dark about what is real and what isn't. A Nolan film is unmistakeable in its artistic value. Its dark gritty, and his style is very distinct. Its hard to describe but you know it when you see it and by all accounts Inception might be his opus when it comes to this style and reality bending. But this all started with Memento, which deals with something nearly as fragmentary and illusory as dreams, memory. If you are a lover of the movie Inception, then you owe it to yourself to watch the movie that started Nolan on this path, and if you have seen it then you should go re-watch it, Memento is truly a great movie.

"A memento of Christopher Nolan's inception"

Written By: C. CRADDOCK

Though Memento wasn't Christopher Nolan's very first film, it was his first shot at the big time, as Doodlebug was a 3 minute short and Following was a student film made on a budget of under $6,000. So, you could call Memento a memento of Christopher Nolan's inception as a professional director. It is based on a story that his brother Jonathan wrote about a man who suffers from Anterograde Amnesia--the inability to form new memories after damage to the hippocampus. This character is named Leonard Shelby and he is played by the versatile Australian Actor, Guy Pearce:

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Leonard Shelby: It's just an anonymous room. There's nothing in the drawers. But you look anyway. Nothing except the Gideon bible, which I, of course, read religiously.
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Pearce is really good in this, and though the premise has a built in catch--since he can't remember anything he continuously says the same things and tells the same stories until the people he meets and the audience are both totally fed up--I enjoyed his performance a lot. Leonard is bent on getting revenge on the man who murdered his wife, but his memory problem not only makes this especially difficult--he takes notes, Polaroids, and even has important "facts" tattooed on himself in a futile attempt to keep track of it all--it also makes us doubt the veracity of his subjective view of reality. Is he really on track to get revenge, or is he being manipulated by others with their own agendas? And if he does get revenge, how will he enjoy that dish--best served cold--if he can't even remember it being served? And even the memories he does have, the ones formed before the accident, how does he know that they are true?

Leonard Shelby--and the other characters, too--are all the ultimate Unreliable Narrators. I first heard the term in conjunction with the novel The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford, but if you watch the director's interview in the DVD bonus material, Nolan uses it to describe Leonard. Such elevated concepts and questioning of the very nature of reality are the hallmarks of Nolan's films. He is a rare director who can both toy with philosophy and a big budget, and still fill the seats. An art house director whose films are blockbusters. Memento, while certainly no blockbuster, was at least successful enough to allow him to keep making films. I have not seen Inception yet, but it seems to be doing very well at the box office, while sporting a convoluted and deep plot that once again questions the nature of reality. Both Memento and Inception remind me in a way of The Matrix, and by the way, the other two supporting cast members--Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano--were both in The Matrix as Trinity and Cypher respectively. They are both feeding Shelby stories that may or may not be true. In Memento, who isn't an Unreliable Narrator?

The fun of watching Memento is putting together the pieces of the puzzle. It alternates between flashback scenes, which are in black and white, and color scenes that are present time, moving forward. The chronology of this approach is identical to the way F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby with each flashback sequence going further and further back in time until at the end the puzzle of Gatsby's greatness is solved. Now that I think of it, Nick Carraway was also a kind of Unreliable Narrator, because the first thing he says is:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

And Carraway then proceeds to use the rest of the book to harshly judge and criticize just about everyone, advantaged or not.

L.A. Confidential (Snap Case) (1997) Guy Pearce was Ed Exley
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) Guy Pearce was Adam/Felicia
The Chumscrubber (2005) Carrie-Anne Moss was Jerri Falls
Chocolat (2000) Carrie-Anne Moss was Caroline Clairmont
The Ultimate Matrix Collection (1999) Carrie-Anne Moss was Trinity in The Matrix and 2 subsequent sequels, Joe Pantoliano was Cypher
The Moguls (aka The Amateurs) (2005) Joe Pantoliano was Some Idiot
Daredevil (Director's Cut) (2003) Joe Pantoliano was Ben Urich
The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) Joe Pantoliano was Mogan
Bound (1996) Joe Pantoliano was Caesar
The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2008) Directed by Christopher Nolan

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Leonard Shelby: Now... where was I?
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