Memento

Grade: A-

I always have a fear when I’m reading a truly wonderful book that the final pages just won’t live up to the rest of the work – and four out of five times, it doesn’t. This movie is a stunner most of the way through – fascinating, intricate, thought-provoking, with a central performance by Guy Pearce that is sexy, simple, and oddly moving. The screenplay is a marvel, as it twits and turns backward toward its conclusion/beginning – a sure thing for an Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, the film ends on a note of lengthy exposition, which delivers far too much information far too quickly and strays from the film’s ingenious conceit of slowly unfolding and re-unfolding information, twisting our own perceptions about what happened before/later. The ending was a proverbial let-down, and one wishes the filmmakers had extended the piece to show us what instead we are told. The overall film however is genius, and forces one to question and re-evaluate the meaning of what we accept as facts, memory, and perception. Also, as is so rare in movies, this one creates an entirely new world which we have never seen before – you’ll be thinking about this one for days.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0209144/