New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

48 21
80 Band's Visit, The
69 Bank Job, The
83 Chop Shop
64 Chronicle of an Escape
46 CJ7
36 College Road Trip
68 Cool School, The
78 Counterfeiters, The
35 Deal
51 Doomsday
58 Felon
59 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
55 Irina Palm
79 Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
69 Last Winter, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
39 Never Back Down
55 Nim's Island
48 Penelope
17 Prom Night
xx Rogue
44 Ruins, The
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
40 Sleepwalking
57 Smart People
50 Step Up 2 the Streets
61 Stop Loss
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
72 Surfwise
54 Tracey Fragments, The
55 Turn the River
55 Without the King
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Memento
Newmarket Capital Group


9.2

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 115 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for violence, language and some drug content

Starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Mark Boone Junior, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Harriet Sansom Harris

Dismissed by the police, Leonard Shelby (Pearce) is obsessed with pursuing vengeance for the rape and murder of his wife. The difficulty of his quest is compounded by his rare, untreatable form of memory loss.

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Christopher Nolan Jonathan Nolan (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Christopher Nolan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 4, 2001 Video: September 4, 2001 Theatrical: March 16, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	120 minutes, B/W / Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Christopher Nolan's screenplay received Oscar, Golden Globe, AFI and Spirit Award nominations in 2001-02. Named Best Picture of 2001 by the Toronto Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society (tie with Mulholland Drive).

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A delicious one-time treat.

100

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Pearce, who's in every scene except the Sammy flashbacks, dominates the picture through his feral performance.

100

Newsweek Jeff Giles

A gripping, utterly unexpected noir, glinting with bits of poetry and a hard, deadpan humor.

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Memento, which may be the ultimate existential thriller, has a spooky repetitive urgency that takes on the clarity of a dream.

100

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

One of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects."

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A hard and bright and tough film in all the best ways.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Enthralling or infuriating.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Deconstructs time and space with Einstein-caliber dexterity in the service of a delectably disturbing tale of revenge.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A 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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Operates 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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The 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.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Pi."

Washington Post Desson Thomson

You're exhilarated from beginning to end.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Like the best filmmakers at Sundance 2001, Nolan leaps into the wild blue and dares us to leap with him. Go for it.

USA Today Mike Clark

Has 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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This 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.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The most disorienting and trippiest data-retrieval caper in years.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

A puzzle movie in which the puzzle is actually worth the time and effort to solve.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Terrifically satisfying film.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

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, and knowledge is supplanted by "information" from a tumult of spin-controlled, unreliable narrators.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Nolan'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.

Film.com Peter Brunette

Despite 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.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Nolan 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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A diabolical and absorbing experience.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This unconventionally structured thriller moves at an energetic pace, spurred by a string of clever variations on conventional film narrative.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Fiendishly tricky contraption.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Bound to be talked about, debated and eviscerated far more than it's understood.

Time Richard Schickel

The 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.

Slate David Edelstein

It's scary to have to puzzle out a plot line scene by scene -- scary and exhilarating, at least for an hour.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Feels mostly like an audacious prank.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Once you've seen it all once I bet you'll wish you were watching "Groundhog Day" -- again.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Whenever 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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The dramatic content in Memento is as blank as Leonard's post-traumatic mental state.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.2 (out of 10) based on 115 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Amazing movie. Acting was incredible and Nolan's directing was very beautiful in a way.

J gave it a10:
A great thriller with a very cool existentialist subtext, especially at the end. I agree with Woob; you really need to see this movie at least twice to pick up all the foreshadowing clues (the superb editing hides these cleverly).

[Anonymous] gave it a5:
Okay film in every aspect. But contrary to the popular belief here, it is certainly not a must see or even exceptionally smart. I felt it to be very predictable and shallow. Its trying to confuse the viewer just to be artsy and different. Don't trust the reviewers on which movies you must see.

Woob gave it a10:
Uh....awesome. A great film with so many little foreshadowing details that you never notice the first time.

John V gave it a10:
Excellent Film. Carrie-Anne Moss was outstanding in this film.

Alex P. gave it a10:
A very smart movie that isn't for everyone. But those willing to follow it carefully are rewarded with excellent acting, great edting, and an overall interesting and humane story.

Patrick D. gave it a10:
Harry Potter got a better score than this.

Memento Newmarket Capital Group

Memento
Newmarket Capital Group