Release Year: 2000

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan (short story)

Stars: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss

Gird your loins for some massive, brain-tickling confusion: Memento. 

To give you a little teaser (and to tease you), we've written this next paragraph in the same way that Memento plays out: bass-ackwards.

Each scene happens in reverse chronological order, so we start at the end and end at the beginning. Not like rewinding reverse. Oh, and there's another catch; most of the movie is told in reverse. He leaves himself pictures and tattoos so he can keep track of his friends, foes, and all the evidence he has as he goes on his manhunt. It's about a man looking for his wife's killer, but the catch is that he can't form any new memories since he was injured during her attack. Memento is one crazy movie.

Are you weeping? 

Well, the good news is that Memento is a little easier to follow than that.

Actually, no, it's not.

Let's backtrack a bit to 2000 when Memento first came out. It was produced by Summit Entertainment and directed by Christopher Nolan, the king of contemporary blockbusters. It was super well received by critics and consumers alike, and, while it wasn't Nolan's first movie, it was the one that really put him on course toward directorial stardom.

Memento stars Guy Pearce as its amnesiac protagonist. Alongside Pearce, The Matrix duo Carrie-Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano play supporting roles as Natalie and Teddy. They may not be living in an alternate, computer simulated reality, but that doesn't mean Memento is any less of a trip.

In fact, it's precisely the terrifying reality of this film that's what's so mind-warpingly insane.

If you want to know more about this mind-bending, time-bending and genre-bending movie, you'll want to dive all the way in. This nutshell, like Leonard's case, is only just beginning to crack.

And the third and final reason you should… no, we're done messing with you. There are so many reasons to study Memento that we're going to forgo another riddled paragraph and cut straight to the chase while keeping our chronology intact.

First of all: science. Neurologists have actually commented on the accuracy of Memento's depiction of anterograde amnesia. We're not suggesting you watch it before taking you're next psychology exam, but when smart people talk up the factuality of a major Hollywood movie, you know it's going to be intense. Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. And Memento joins the ranks of such films as Interstellar and The Martian in showing just how strange (and entertaining) truth can be.

But Memento is more than a movie adapted from a chapter in a science textbook; it's also a work of art. The narrative structure of the film is unlike anything that's been done before… or done since. It's in a league of its own. There have been some creative storylines like the Wachowski's take on Cloud Atlas, but nothing quite like the reverse-chronology interspersed with flashbacks that Memento offers. It's maddening, it's intense, it's highly-watchable… and it works. This is narrative innovation at its finest.

But what use is clever story telling if we ignore the story itself—the meat (or protein substitute) of our analysis sandwich? Memento delves deep. It's as thematically packed as a Spike Lee flick, as bloody as any of Tarantino's finest, and as psychologically taut as anything that Park Chan-wook can dish out. Memento is a movie that's concerned with identity and memory and consciousness and time. It's also about a man who's hell-bent on revenge at any bloody cost… and ponders the nature of revenge, truth, and goodness even as he shoots people at point-blank range.

So whether you're in the mood for a psychological thriller, a meditation on philosophical themes, a bafflingly reinvention of narrative structure, or just want to brush up on weird medical conditions, Memento's for you. Take a Polaroid (or screenshot) of this page and write a note on it: you're going to want to remember not to forget about Memento.