Very complex detective thriller. Guy Pearce (leads) a terrific cast alongside Carrie Anne Moss. If you want to see the beginnings of how Nolan became such a big director, this is one to watch.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 11, 2023

Think of all the ways that a linear film structure stabilizes us - the cause and effect chain of events. But Memento is about a character completely destabilized, so Nolan destabilizes us accordingly in a way maybe no other movie has.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 10, 2020

Memento would only be half as fun with only one gimmick or the other. Instead, the backward storytelling and the frozen man make for a wonderful pair, combining into something far more redemptive than it sounds.

| Mar 16, 2020

I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time.

| Mar 26, 2014

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 26, 2014

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

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

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

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

More a puzzle than a meaningful story, it reminds me of how Edmund Wilson compared reading a mystery to eagerly unpacking a box of excelsior, only to find a few rusty nails at the bottom.

| Sep 27, 2011

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.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 17, 2011

I am neither upset nor disturbed by Memento , only vaguely dissatisfied. I simply don't buy Jonathan Nolan's thesis that audiences know all the tropes and tricks of crime thrillers backward and forward.

| Apr 27, 2007

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.

| Feb 9, 2006

It's all pretty confusing, but then again, so were many of the classic film noirs.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2002

Intriguing and accomplished as it was, Memento left me unpersuaded that this trip was really necessary.

| Original Score: C- | May 9, 2002

By the conclusion, your immediate reaction is to want to see the movie again to try to put the pieces together. Your second instinct is to give it a rest.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 22, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2001

Christopher Nolan's extraordinary film is a brainteaser and a heartbreaker.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2001

Christopher Nolan's film is a meditative study of the duplicituous nature of memory.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 2, 2001

Nolan pulls off this complicated narrative structure with great flair.

| Apr 13, 2001