Memento

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A delicious one-time treat.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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

Newsweek Jeff Giles

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

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.

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.