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100One of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects."
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100Pearce, who's in every scene except the Sammy flashbacks, dominates the picture through his feral performance.
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100Memento, which may be the ultimate existential thriller, has a spooky repetitive urgency that takes on the clarity of a dream.
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100A delicious one-time treat.
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100A gripping, utterly unexpected noir, glinting with bits of poetry and a hard, deadpan humor.
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91A hard and bright and tough film in all the best ways.
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90Enthralling or infuriating.
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90Like the best filmmakers at Sundance 2001, Nolan leaps into the wild blue and dares us to leap with him. Go for it.
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90The video stores are filled with examples of retro-noir and neo-noir, but Christopher Nolan's audacious timebender is something else. Call it meta-noir.
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90A provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir, an intricate, inventive use of cinema's possibilities that pushes what can be done on screen in an unusual direction.
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90A brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Pi."
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90Deconstructs time and space with Einstein-caliber dexterity in the service of a delectably disturbing tale of revenge.
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90Operates in an orbit somewhere between Oliver Sacks and Lewis Carroll. I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time.
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90You're exhilarated from beginning to end.
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90Unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance.
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88A puzzle movie in which the puzzle is actually worth the time and effort to solve.
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88This demanding puzzle is not for the "Chocolat" crowd, but those who stay with it will experience perhaps the most dazzling film released so far this year - even though a second viewing is virtually mandatory.
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88Terrifically satisfying film.
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88Has the unanticipated craft and artfully ambiguous appeal of last year's "Croupier," a movie whose art-house word-of-mouth success could be duplicated here.
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88The most disorienting and trippiest data-retrieval caper in years.
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80Nolan's engrossing, backwards-ticking noir will run you so thoroughly in circles that you'll need to see it at least twice for maximum enjoyment.
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80Nolan sustains an arty note of existential dread that probably will work better for noir-steeped film critics and overserious philosophy grad students than for general audiences, but he brings off a few brisk bravura moments.
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80If 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, and knowledge is supplanted by "information" from a tumult of spin-controlled, unreliable narrators.
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80Despite the first-rate acting, the narrative is the star of this show, so much so that you feel yourself occasionally losing interest in the travails of the characters. Instead, you hang on every word and every tiny object, every cut and bruise in the frame, looking for clues that will help you make sense of what's going on.
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75A diabolical and absorbing experience.
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75This unconventionally structured thriller moves at an energetic pace, spurred by a string of clever variations on conventional film narrative.
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75Fiendishly tricky contraption.
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75Bound to be talked about, debated and eviscerated far more than it's understood.
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70It's scary to have to puzzle out a plot line scene by scene -- scary and exhilarating, at least for an hour.
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70The film takes this attempt to shatter narrative into little pieces about as far into incoherence as it can go; yet it is also full of odd, hypnotic menace.
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50Feels mostly like an audacious prank.
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40Once you've seen it all once I bet you'll wish you were watching "Groundhog Day" -- again.
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40Whenever Harris or Tobolowsky come on-screen they stop Memento dead in its clever tracks. You want to tell Nolan to stop all the po-mo deconstructive game playing and pay attention to the two human beings in front of him.
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38The dramatic content in Memento is as blank as Leonard's post-traumatic mental state.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 78 out of 81
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Mixed: 0 out of 81
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Negative: 3 out of 81
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