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Summary: Portrait of the Post-Modern Existentialist
Review: I've already reviewed this movie twice, so I'll just mention some themes I have been uncovering in watching this movie and in reading detailed analyses...GRIEF. For me, this one comes home more than the others, yet is the linchpin for all the others as well. "How can I heal ...if I can't feel ...time?" Leonard asks, and I must admit, grief is like that. You can't feel time. Which leads to a sense of... PERMANENT DISORIENTATION. No matter where you are, you're not completely there. Everything feels disconnected, effects not lining up perfectly with causes. Leonard states that "It's like waking, like you just woke up" and it is this disorientation, among other things, that leads to... ALIENATION. I call this "Portable Loneliness," for it goes with you wherever you go. In a crowd, on a bus, at lunch with a friend, we Gen Xers and so forth feel alone in a crowd, for we have become convinced through existentialist, post-modernist Deconstructionism that nothing holds together and that only the self is truly real and permanent. This brings us to... SELF-DECEPTION. We lie to ourselves to be happy, and as Teddy says "We all do it!" We want to believe that we are good people and that the people we love are good people. Leonard wanted to believe that his wife was murdered when she was raped so that he did not have to face the truth that (1) he accidentally killed his own wife, and (2) his wife had become an unbearable person to live with after "the incident" and tricked him into killing her. We lie to ourselves. All of us. This is apparently not much of a Memento review. .. I think it's time we explore the themes that Nolan has woven so discreetly behind the films ...themes so unobtrusive that they can be passed over without a second glance. As much as an over-the-top person like myself might hate to admit it, that is the sign of truly excellent writing...
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Summary: A truly original vision....
Review: Director Christopher Nolan recieved a great deal of critical acclaim for Momento, and deservedly so. The film is unlike any film before it, and the amount of thought and artistry put into the film make it a true masterpiece. The film is very unorthodox, for the sequence of events play almost backwards and forwards at the same time, achieveing a somewhat strange viewing experience. Often times it feels like deja vu, and leaves you questioning your own perception of events. Nolan has really crafted this film into a visual and mental puzzle, giving us clues here and there yet never insulting our intelligence. Joe Pantoliano does a great job in this film, as does Carrie-Anne Moss, but Guy Pearce really does a marvelous job. He uses body language and other subtle devices to make his "condition" truly believeable. The special edition DVD is very nice, as its packaging is very clever and fitting for a film such as this. The special features menu is a giant puzzle which you must decipher to access certain features, and it is very entertaining and enjoyable. A DVD set like this really makes you frown upon the many DVD's being released for big name movies with hardly a commentary track on them but priced twice as high. This limited edition version is worth every penny and is a must have if you love this film.
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Summary: A Noir among Noirs
Review: It's difficult to think of a more engrossing movie then Memento. Chris Nolan took a good idea (a man who can't remember attempting to avenge his wife's murder), threw in a gimmick (a slick backward presentation), and created a masterwork. The opening, where a Polaroid undevelops, is a classy lead-in to the style. But that's just the start.
The backwards style is more then a gimmick. The plot is mostly told by ending the scene at the beginning of the prior scene; this is intercut with black and white footage that serves mainly for plot exposition; watch carefully the second time, and you'll see Nolan's genius
Guy Pearce's performance as Lenny, while not the key to the film, is effective. We can feel Lenny's confusion as time and time again he wonders, "What just happened?" Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano are equally effective; we are never quite sure why they're doing what they do, any more then Lenny is.
The ending... err, the middle... is one of the strongest and most confusing events in the film. Every thing you witnessed since the first shot of the movie is seen in a new light, questions are answered, and new ones are posed; that this is true in all good Noir does not in any way stifle the questions you find yourself asking as you attempt to decide who had been lying all that time.
All this: the style and substance, plot and gimick, performance and editing, together, adds up to one of the best, most distinctive films of 2001.
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Summary: absolutely love a film that makes one want to cheque it over
Review: and over again. With every screening there is always something new to this mystery, suspense film. Julianne Moore and Guy Pearce were incredible. He should have won an Oscar.
Rating:
Summary: Believe the hype...it really is that good.
Review: Great movies don't necessarily make great videos/DVD's. There are some movies that you choose to own just to have and some movies you choose to own because the "extras" add to a movie that you might have previously appreciated, but wouldn't necessarily have considered owning.
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Then there's "Memento".
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If this movie came with nothing more than just the DVD and a brown paper bag wrapper a'la Led Zeppelin's old "In Through The Out Door" LP this movie would still more than earn back its price because it's so easy to watch again and again and again, picking up details that you've previously missed. If you've only heard how good the movie is and haven't seen it, buying the "Limited Edition" is worthwhile. If you own the orignal single disc version of the movie, buying the "Limited Edition" is likewise worthwhile. At the very least you can kill hours of any rainy day surfing through the menu features.
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The packaging may be a bit daft, but it is at least original, which is befitting one of THE most original movies made from any corner of the industry in years. Buy it, and give yourself a weekend to watch it...I promise it will be THE topic of conversation for you when you make it back to work Monday morning.
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Summary: wha?
Review: This movie is a thinker, lots to keep track of. the cover of the DVD explains the premise quite well, it is about a man named momento who takes photos with a polaroid to remember things. Buy this DVD, it's good for when chicks come over.
Rating:
Summary: Pains my brain.
Review: I don't get it. How could something so simple be so complex? This movie is one big juxtaposition and I love it. So far I've put the DVD in the machine and sat through it a total of 14 times. Leonard certainly gets to you. And after each viewing I'm still not sure if I'm with him or against him. I guess that's a cretit to Guy Pearce's talent as an actor. More movies like this should get made. It's a shame that nobody's making them.
Rating: 
Summary: Well made film, but who cares?
Review: Excrutiating. Boring. Pointless. These are the adjectives that beat like a slow loungy postmodern wipeout in my brain from 5 minutes into this mess. I know I was supposed to like it because all my male friends with scruffy French-influenced facial hair and all my female friends with rings in their nose said it was the bomb. But my patience with a movie that won't meet me half way is nil to begin with. I could hear the director saying, "Forget 'em if they can't take a joke! It doesn't have to make sense, it's art!" all the way through. I don't care if "there is no flaw" as the spammer says. Don't care if it was a dazzling job of direction and editing. Don't care if the main actor was convincing in a sweaty desperate way that we've all come to love since Survivor hit the air. Because of the structure, none of it makes sense for more than 30 seconds at a time. That seems to be the point. Let's make a movie that doesn't hang together. We are way more lost than the narrator, who at least may have had the luxury of asking the director what he meant be all that. It is a pinata of a film: the director blindfolds us, spins us around until we are dizzy, and then pushes us at the thing we are supposed to get. After this film, I was seized by the impulse to rush to a tattoo place and have "Don't go to any Christopher Nolan film ever again" and "Go to theater and demand money back" inked into my forearms. Then it hit me "Life imitates Art". Like OMG!! Is that ironic or what?!?
Rating:
Summary: Can you say "Deconstructed"? I thought ya could!
Review: To be blunt, Memento is the cultural equivelant of colorization or hollywood remakes, or even those '70s Disco-Beat recordings of Big Band music KTel used to hawk on late night TV. It seeks, in a word, to make a cold meal appetizing to a new audience and isn't particularly skillful or smart about how it proceeds toward that dubious goal. Here it is people: A willfully perverse disassembly and reassembly of linear narrative is all Memento has going for it. Whoopee! To anyone having even name-dropping contact with Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Kurosawa's Rashomon or Welle's Citizen Kane, this alone isn't nearly enough to get the job done. Better people have made the map of this territory; Memento's makers don't know how to read it, plain and simple. Memento looks pretty, projecting depth with tons of style. But it is essentially as slick and vaccuous as movies get. It is Deep Movie Lite. It is Dragonfly for the coffeehouse set. One Star, because there is no Zero Star. Consider yourself warned.
Rating: 
Summary: All I can remember is my recurring condition...
Review: This movie might interest you if you can look past the fact that it is both inherently flawed in plot and boring as hell. Apparently our hero can't remember anything, yet he's clairvoyant when it comes to diagnosing his own constantly recurring amnesia. Just brilliant enough to interest scores of stoned undergraduates.
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