Memento Reviews

treats the audience with respect without being overly pretentious

Full Review | Original Score: B

Occasionally the film trips over its own complexity, but it's tense, devious and evokes Leonard's disorientation quite brilliantly. Operation of heavy machinery after watching is a definite no-no.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

A brilliantly told mindbender, a perfect example of how the right approach to storytelling can elevate a film

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

Nolan built a better mousetrap of a neo-noir, using the tricky gimmick of a complex, purposefully disorienting narrative. [Blu-ray]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Memento is one of those jigsaw puzzles whose pieces snap together more tightly with each viewing. Fueling it all is a performance by Guy Pearce that's as indelible as the tattoo ink covering his body.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

Innovative movie with a mature premise.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

More than an enigmatic, jittery, occasionally funny treatise on vengeance's fruitlessness, "Memento" never abandons an emotional quandary: How can a man unable to feel time expect to heal? Leonard loses himself, as we all do, in habit and repetition.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

Christopher Nolan's breakthrough feature is a terrific film noir, witty, inventive, thrilling and intriguing from the first frame to the very last.

Full Review | Original Score: A

Nolan's sophomore effort is a near peerless psychological thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 92/100

Writer-director Christopher Nolan toys with our minds as each scene ends where the previous scene began in a sort of tidal regression and progression of story and character.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The film is cool, contemplative, a puzzle movie in which you see the finished puzzle right up front and then watch as it disassembles itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Of all the ironies which fill the film, the most complementary may be that this is film which will not soon be forgotten.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

Just when you thought film noir was dead and buried, along comes the memorably mind-bending Memento.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

There's grade A work from all concerned, especially Pearce, but in the end this is Nolan's film. And he delivers, with a vengeance.

Full Review

Memento is as bleak as they come. But sometimes staring into humanity's heart of darkness is a healthy thing.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

Fans of film noir and The Usual Suspects will find much to appreciate about Memento, with its circular loop of lost memory.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

Ironically, it's one of the most memorable films so far this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Nolan's skill lies in creating an atmosphere for this story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

| Original Score: 3.5/4

...Forces the viewer to wrap his mind around an entirely new kind of storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Full Review