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Christopher Nolan skillfully guides the audience through Memento's fractured narrative, seeping his film in existential dread.
All Critics (172) | Top Critics (44) | Fresh (159) | Rotten (13) | DVD (26)
I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time. Mar 26, 2014
I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time.
Joe Morgenstern
Writer-director Christopher Nolan's second film is one of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since The Usual Suspects. Mar 26, 2014 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…
Writer-director Christopher Nolan's second film is one of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since The Usual Suspects.
Jack Mathews
The young British writer and director Christopher Nolan, who has every intention of putting us through the mill, doubles his fun by running the whole story backward. Mar 26, 2014 | Full Review…
The young British writer and director Christopher Nolan, who has every intention of putting us through the mill, doubles his fun by running the whole story backward.
Anthony Lane
The astonishing payoff takes the film to another level entirely, unleashing a battery of existential questions that shed new light on everything that precedes it. Mar 26, 2014 | Full Review…
The astonishing payoff takes the film to another level entirely, unleashing a battery of existential questions that shed new light on everything that precedes it.
Scott Tobias
You have to pay close attention to Memento, the most original thriller to come along in years -- and one of the best. Mar 26, 2014 | Full Review…
You have to pay close attention to Memento, the most original thriller to come along in years -- and one of the best.
Jay Boyar
If nothing else, Memento is a savvy comment on the queasy uncertainties of the postmodern condition, in which history goes no further back than yesterday's news. Mar 26, 2014 | Full Review…
If nothing else, Memento is a savvy comment on the queasy uncertainties of the postmodern condition, in which history goes no further back than yesterday's news.
Ella Taylor
Christopher Nolan's cinematic breakthrough... Feb 6, 2019 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…
Christopher Nolan's cinematic breakthrough...
David Nusair
If the prospect of having to do some of the work yourself doesn't alarm you, then Nolan's first American film is well worth catching, a thriller which is for once authentically Borgesian, to use an overworked qualifier. Nov 27, 2017 | Full Review…
If the prospect of having to do some of the work yourself doesn't alarm you, then Nolan's first American film is well worth catching, a thriller which is for once authentically Borgesian, to use an overworked qualifier.
Gilbert Adair
The three leads are excellent, but it's the masterful execution of an almost-too-clever-for-its-own-good concept which really makes this the most delicious kind of food for the mind. Mar 26, 2014 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
The three leads are excellent, but it's the masterful execution of an almost-too-clever-for-its-own-good concept which really makes this the most delicious kind of food for the mind.
Pearce's central performance is as compelling as the film's premise and Nolan's execution of it. In Pearce's hands, Leonard is a time bomb with a short fuse. Mar 26, 2014
Pearce's central performance is as compelling as the film's premise and Nolan's execution of it. In Pearce's hands, Leonard is a time bomb with a short fuse.
Louis B. Hobson
This terrific movie, about one man's quest for vengeance, does everything a thriller is supposed to do: intrigue, involve and keep you guessing. Mar 26, 2014
This terrific movie, about one man's quest for vengeance, does everything a thriller is supposed to do: intrigue, involve and keep you guessing.
Leah Rozen
The mystery requires a lot of concentration, but the stunning final scene is ample reward. Not just an indulgence, the ingenious structure makes the point that memory, although unreliable, is what we depend upon for our sense of reality. Mar 26, 2014 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
The mystery requires a lot of concentration, but the stunning final scene is ample reward. Not just an indulgence, the ingenious structure makes the point that memory, although unreliable, is what we depend upon for our sense of reality.
David McGillivray
Christopher and Jonathan Nolan make a shocking and enticing story in Memento. From its unconventional formula of storytelling to the shocking revelations, the film is a landmark for the brothers as one of their bests and one cinemas groundbreaking tales. 5/5
Super Reviewer
An intellectually stimulating and expertly edited exercise in storytelling built upon two alternating threads that move in opposite directions (the main one backwards and a black-and-white subplot forward) until they converge in the end, making us undergo the same disorientation of its character.
I need to watch this again.
An ex insurance investigator with a medical condition that leaves him with no short term memory is hunting the killer of his wife with the aid of notes left to himself in the form of tattoos all over his body. Christopher Nolan's big budget debut is a stunningly original twist on the detective movie formula, telling the story of a man's quest for vengeance in reverse chronological order. This sounds like a very simple, almost obvious idea, but it is done with such beautifully engineered intelligence and subtlety that it keeps you guessing not only til the end of the film, but also til the end of each scene as you, along with Guy Pearce's obsessive investigator, try to link each jigsaw puzzle piece of the story together. It's one of those films that is ironically unforgettable, and my only wish is that I could erase MY memory and watch it for the first time again and again. Truly unique and quite, quite brilliant.
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