Change Your Image
digrate
Reviews
Memento (2000)
An explanation, plus a defense of two main criticisms
This review probably won't mean much if you haven't seen the movie.
I've seen a bunch of reviews of this, and so far, I haven't seen this explanation for why it was shot chronologically backwards (sorry if it was to whomever else wrote it down first - the point is, I figured this out on my own). While it does help artistically (making the viewer sympathize with the lead by having to constantly reconstruct the past, and being constantly confused), it creates an even more practical simulation of the story. If the movie were shot forwards, the viewer would then remember the past - why things happened, who characters are. However, by shooting it backwards, viewers do not remember the past, like the character. It allows the viewer to watch each scene with no memory of the preceding events. SPOILER - Would you have reacted the same way to Natalie crying with blood on her face the same way if you knew it was Leonard who did it? Exactly. This technique allows for plot twists like that one by not letting the audience know the important info Leonard doesn't. This technique probably had many purposes, although I think the others were included after the decision to shoot backwards for this reason.
The most amazing artistic part of the movie, however, was its ability to create suspense by going backwards in time. SPOILER - I was gripped by the one note that drove most of the plot: the first about Teddy: "do not believe his lies". The movie was unconventional, but there was great suspense (for me, at least) about the origin of that note, since all the others came out of that one. Why would Teddy be lying? Couldn't his advice have been valid, too? I was dying to know during the second half. Everyone who said there is no suspense were obviously not willing to commit to the movie. The movie doesn't leave neon signs; You have to do a bit of thinking on your own. There was more to the movie than exploring a self-imposed limitation. There was suspense and mystery that required attention for true benefit. Considering the unconventional narrative structure, this movie was seamless in plot. Many complain "how can he remember his condition if he found out about it after the injury?", but remember, his condition, unlike Sammy's, was physical. He could remember things through instinct and repetition (checking the hotel night stand when he woke up). He could have made a note about his condition early, on, but I'd assume he'd have had to use it a lot (read: repetitively). That routine of explaining himself to everyone new - to him, everyone - could have become instinct, like opening the drawer, and he would have remembered it. Eat that! This was one of the most creative, artistically innovative movies since 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Horror House on Highway Five (1985)
Baffling
There are two ways you can watch this: alone, or with people. If you watch it alone, you are a)comatose b)about to . I know this phrase is used a lot, but now it's an understatement. THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER. Everything from the opening credits listing the make-up and stunt people before the writer and not the director, to the final shot when Richard Nixon and Allan Ginsberg form an unlikely duo in a last-ditch attempt to completely ruin sense. The ultimate post-modernist statement: not only the complete deconstruction of logic and convention but also breaking every rule of satire surrealism, and overproduction. It is appealing on absolutely no level. If you watch it with people, you become punchdrunk immediately as you try to rationalize why a guy who was strangled is covered in blood and why a girl with her wrists gashed has only lost about a teaspoon. You (plural) will all laugh, not at the movie, but at how any attempt to understand ANY part of the movie hurts every part of your brain. It is post-to the seventh-degree-modernism, like nothing you ever have seen, or will see. It goes so far beyond any convention in any medium that it will likely take years to reproduce something so astounding. It is a must see, simply because I can't thing of any reason why this was made, or why anything in the future will be so... It transcends good and bad! Truly in a class of its own. SEE IT: THE WAY YOU THINK WILL BE FOREVER CHANGED!