Destroyer of Worlds

Film: Oppenheimer
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I don’t think anyone was surprised when Oppenheimer cleaned up at the most recent Oscars ceremony. I hadn’t seen the film until today and I would have picked it to win more than the seven it did. Christopher Nolan was due to win an Oscar, as the best working director without one in the minds of many people (although I’d pick either David Fincher or Greta Gerwig). But it was Nolan’s year and nothing was going to knock this movie and Nolan off of that pedestal. It’s been one that I’ve been looking to watch for some time, but the last few months have been disturbingly busy, and this film is a good three hours long. As it is, it took me a couple of days to watch it.

This, of course, is the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man most credited with the creation of the first atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. As befits a movie that is a good three hours long, Oppenheimer turns out to be a lot more complicated than we might think. The film has the good taste not to be hagiographic, although I wouldn’t call this a “warts and all” biography, either. Oppenheimer is painted as at least a sympathizer of communist sympathizers (his brother, his wife), as well as a womanizer. So, we’re going to be led to seeing him as brilliant, but flawed, which is probably the best we can expect.

Palindrome

Film: Tenet
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on the new portable.

I wanted to like Tenet. I really did want to like it. The truth is that I didn’t hate Tenet, but I also don’t know that I fully understood it. That’s the major problem with this movie; it feels very much like Nolan made this as confusing as possible for the sake of being confusing. I know there were people who found Inception difficult to follow or confusing, but most people seemed to follow it pretty handily. Tenet feels like Nolan was getting paid by how many people he confused.

Tenet is a time travel story after a fashion. It’s not necessarily people going forward or backward in time to different eras. No, this is one of those Gordian knot movies that loops in on itself. People in the film aren’t traveling through time, but moving forward and backward in time, which is called being “inverted.” Knowing this, it will not be a shock to you that we’ll be watching several scenes more than once, one time in the “forward” direction and one inverted. It will also not be a shock that in several cases we will be following the same character both coming and going.

Withdrawal Symptoms

Films: Dunkirk
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

It’s that time of year once again. The Oscar nominations have happened and, as I posted a few weeks ago, there are a bunch more movies on my lists. Dunkirk is one of the more heavily nominated films, even if it’s not hugely represented in my pet categories. It’s hardly a shock that it garnered a bunch of technical nominations and the tremendous Hans Zimmer score was almost certainly a lock for a nomination. It’s also worth noting that as of this writing, Christopher Nolan is the smart-money bet for winning Best Director. It’s also worth noting that despite Nolan’s storied and critically-acclaimed career, this is his first nomination.

Anyone with even a little bit of World War II knowledge will be able to guess quickly that Dunkirk is the story of the mass exodus/retreat by the British Expeditionary Force in 1940. Having been pushed back literally to the coast by the Wehrmacht, the British and French troops stood waiting to be evacuated while the German military squeezed ever tighter. It remains one of the more curious military decisions that the German army allowed so much of the BEF to successfully get back to Britain.

What Dreams May Come...and Come...and Come

Film: Inception
Format: Goodrich Randall 16 Theaters

As I did with Avatar, I’m guessing here. I’m guessing that Inception will eventually make this list and it will do so long before I am done with the list. I rarely see movies in theaters because there’s usually someone in the theater with me who angers me—cell phones, talking, etc. It’s also difficult (and expensive) to find a babysitter. And, honestly, there aren’t a lot of movies worth spending the money on when I can just be patient and wait for it to come to a home format. However, I heard nothing but good about Inception. I was also contacted out of the blue by a friend, so we decided to go.

I’ve seen a whopping three movies in the theater this year, or about one every quarter: Avatar, Iron Man 2, and now Inception. The film has a one-in-three chance of being the best thing I’ve seen in a theater this year, and as it turns out, it is. Inception is a film that requires careful attention. It’s a film made for people willing to pay attention to it. In fact, it requires paying attention to follow, making it exactly the kind of movie I like seeing in the theater. The audience had to sit and watch the thing—no cell phone rings, no noise, no talking. In short, it was a great experience. Even better, my friend Tim and I spent a good half hour talking about what it all meant at the end.

Even better, what writer-director Christopher Nolan has done here is create a movie that absolutely cannot be spoiled. For me to spoil this film, I’d need a good 20 minutes and probably a beer, or at least a decent martini.

Here’s the set-up: a man named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has the ability to enter the dreams of other people. Once inside their dreams, he can extract information from them—safe combinations, corporate secrets, you name it. The dream world functions in many ways like the real world—it has (generally) realistic physics, for instance. The world of the dream is created by Cobb and his team, but is populated by the target with projections of their own subconscious mind. Cobb and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are performing this operation on a Japanese businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe), and we learn that what happens in the first chunk of the film is actually Saito’s dream. In fact, it’s a dream inside a dream.

Saito is actually trying to hire Cobb, because what he wants is something that allegedly can’t be done. He wants Cobb to implant an idea—this process is called “inception”—into the mind of a business competitor. Ultimately, he wants the idea to feel natural to the target, which requires getting deep into the target’s subconscious and attempting to make this implanted idea feel like the target came up with it on his own. In this case, the target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of a dying energy magnate named Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite).

To do the job, Cobb, Arthur, and Saito assemble a team. They hire an architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page), a pharmacist named Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and a thief named Eames (Tom Hardy) and set up a situation that will give them 10 hours inside Fischer’s mind. Complicating all of this is the fact that Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) is dead, and frequently shows up whenever Cobb is inside someone’s mind—and Cobb has issues with her death and in seeing both her and their children.

It’s actually even more complicated than this, but these are the basics. Cobb’s father is played by Michael Caine, who evidently has a rider on his studio contracts that he must appear in every damn movie ever made. Also showing up here is Tom Berenger as Maurice Fischer’s right-hand-man/Robert Fischer’s godfather.

Because once inside Fischer’s head the agents must dive into successive layers of subconscious, the film takes place in a variety of dream states, each one level deeper than the next. Fortunately for the viewer, these layers are easily distinguishable—a cityscape, a hotel, a military prison/hospital in an arctic waste, and a ruined world—and are thus easy to keep straight. One of the selling points is the hotel. Because the physics of the worlds above them affect the dream world anyone is in, sudden shifts in gravity work their way down. So, in the long climactic scene, as the van the characters are in on one dream level falls off a bridge, gravity is suspended the next level down, leading to an amazing sequence of zero-gravity fighting and movement that looks like The Matrix on acid.

In short, Inception requires the audience to think on multiple levels at all times. It’s a film that requires its viewers to determine if they are in the dream state, and decide which level of dream state they are in all the time. It’s a movie that doesn’t talk down to the audience, but invites them instead to think upwardly, to buy into the dream on the screen and engage both emotionally and mentally throughout.

Nolan is a smart filmmaker, and a smarter writer. Inception is damn good, has a cast that really buys into it, and sells the premise at every moment. It doesn’t hurt that two of my favorite actors—Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy—are here, too.

A worthwhile watch made better because of the worthwhile and interesting conversations it leads to once the film stops rolling.

Why to watch Inception: Anything that gets people to use their grey matter is a good thing.
Why not to watch: You want only bread and circuses.

Magic is Cool

Film: The Prestige
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop

Magic is cool. I say this knowing that there are people who disagree, but they’re also wrong. Magic is cool. I’m not such a huge fan of the giant stage illusions—the big tricks that take 20 minutes to set up for a couple of seconds of wow factor. But a good magic trick is something special. For me, the fun is in trying to figure out the secret of how the trick is really done.

The Prestige is all about magic, and the magic of magic. A period piece, the film occurs in the late 19th century or the early 20th. Two up-and-coming magicians work behind the scenes for another magician named Milton (Ricky Jay, who is an impressive magician in his own right). The assistants are named Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). Both are learning the trade of stagecraft and illusion, and Angier’s wife Julia (Piper Perabo) works as Milton’s assistant.

We learn almost immediately, in fact before we know about Milton, that Borden has presumably killed Angier over some long-running feud. He is in prison and awaiting trial when he is made an interesting offer. In exchange for the secrets to all of his tricks, including the one that made him famous, The Transported Man, his daughter will be taken care of instead of relegated to a workhouse and a terrible life.

We then get the story. Angier and Borden want Milton to do more with his act. In the course of this, Borden ties Julia’s hands too tightly, and she is unable to escape from a water tank. Julia drowns, and the feud between the two men begins. Angier wants to know what knot Borden tied, but Borden refuses to tell him, claiming not to know. Milton is ruined because of the accident, as is the man who creates his tricks, Cutter (Michael Caine).

Borden and Angier start their own acts, and proceed to do everything they can to ruin each other’s success. Angier contracts Cutter to work with him, and comes up with a startling new way to do an old trick. Borden destroys the trick on stage, ruining Angier’s run. Borden attempts the trick of catching a bullet, but makes the mistake of calling Angier on stage, who proceeds to shoot off two of his fingers.

Things get nastier when their women get in the middle of the conflict. On Borden’s side, it is his wife, Sarah (Rebecca Hall). For Angier, it is his new assistant and love interest, Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson). Angier sends his assistant to work for Borden, hoping to steal the secret of his new trick, The Transported Man. Sarah, meanwhile, is convinced that her husband has fallen for this new girl and loves her only part of the time, loving both Olivia and his magic and secrets more.

All of this comes from that one trick. In it, Borden bounces a red rubber ball across the stage, then steps into a box on one end of the stage. Then, just as the ball reaches the far end of the stage, he emerges from a second box and catches the ball. Angier becomes obsessed with the trick, hoping to steal the secret, convinced that it must be more complicated than the double that Cutter tells him it is. In fact, Angier does perform the trick with a double for awhile until Borden destroys his reputation once again.

Ultimately, he gets hold of Borden’s diary and decodes it, believing that the key lies in a machine built for Borden by the scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Tesla agrees to help Angier decides to fund Tesla’s work, working through his intermediary, Alley (Andy Serkis). And we are thus lead back to the beginning with the death of Angier, as he performs the newest version of this same trick, and drowning in front of his greatest rival.

The actual plot here is really a lot more complicated than all of this. In fact, it’s the sort of film that requires a couple of thousand words to go through all of the various twists and turns the plot takes. In that respect, it’s pretty impressive. This film trades on its difficulty, demanding that the audience pay close attention to it at every moment. Miss a minute, miss the movie. And while I respect this, my disappointment in it is palpable, and best covered in a spoiler.

*** POOF! A SPOILER APPEARS! ***

What we discover is two-fold. First, Angier’s trick really is a form of magic. Standing under Tesla’s giant device doesn’t teleport him, but produces an exact duplicate of himself elsewhere, a specific distance away. What this means is that every night, the man in the machine gets dropped into a water tank and is drowned—essentially, one version of Angier dies with each performance. Simultaneously, we discover that Borden’s trick is accomplished by virtue of his identical twin. This twin goes around disguised as Fallon, the man who makes the tricks. In fact, the two of them frequently switch places, spending a day as one personality or the other.

Okay. So I can, for the sake of the movie, buy into the idea that Tesla’s machine makes a clone. But why then is he so surprised to fall into the tank every night? He should know what’s coming. Second, all of Borden’s personal problems stem from the fact that he and his twin switch places every day or so—Sarah ends up killing herself because it was the wrong twin, the twin who didn’t love her, playing the role that night. Even if I accept the whole identical twin thing, who would consent to live that much of a charade? One twin could take the role of Fallon, undisguising himself only for the trick reveal. It sure as hell would have made their lives a lot less complicated.

*** POOF! A SPOILER VANISHES! ***

Ultimately, the problem I have with The Prestige is not that it is unbelievable, but that the parts that are supposed to be believable don’t pass the sniff test. It’s certainly an inventive movie and the plot is complicated and intriguing. However, the characters act in ways that no people would act in that situation. For that, it’s a disappointment.

Why to watch The Prestige: A complicated, difficult plot.
Why not to watch: The resolution, after a couple of minutes of thought, is ludicrous.

Two in Every Deck

Films: Batman, The Dark Knight
Format: VHS from personal collection (Batman), DVD from Rasmussen College Library (The Dark Knight), both on big ol’ television.

Ever since Adam West donned a cowl and tights, Batman has had a problem with camp. The original Batman television series was fun, silly, and campy—deliberately so. It couldn’t be taken seriously because it didn’t take itself seriously. Because of this, when the character first came to the big screen, there were some very large hurdles to overcome.

To be honest, Tim Burton didn’t overcome all of those hurdles. There’s plenty of Batman that begs to be taken seriously, but much cannot be, and a lot of this comes from the art direction of the film. It’s impossible to take Gotham City as a real place because it seems to exist in no real time period. The technology is all real and modern, but the look is something from an idealized 1930s or thereabout. Criminals all dress like Dick Tracy villains, for instance. The city is an art deco wonderland of massive architecture and sculptures. There’s no way to tell when this film might take place—Gotham exists in a bizarre twilight zone of old cars and modern technology. The architecture of the city is schizo-gothic, all gargoyles and giant evil machinery.

Chances are that you’ve already seen this film, but on the off chance you haven’t, Batman covers the origin of the superhero character and then his battle with the insidious Joker. The Batman is the alternate identity of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), who witnessed his parents being murdered when he was a child. In response, he became a creature of terror designed to frighten the criminal element.

We also get a mob war started by Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), who works for crime boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance). What Grissom doesn’t know is that Jack is two-timing him with Grissom’s girlfriend Alicia (Jerry Hall). Grissom takes revenge by setting Jack up at a heist in a chemical plant. During the course of the raid and the attempt to kill or capture Napier, Batman shows up and dumps him into a vat of chemicals (mirroring the origin story from the graphic novel The Killing Joke). Napier survives, becoming the Joker thanks to the extreme physical damage from the toxic sludge.

Throw into this a reporter named Knox (Robert Wuhl) and a photographer named Vicki Vale (Kim Bassinger). Both want to break the story on the Batman. Vale also manages to start a relationship with Bruce Wayne, who, thanks to his extracurricular activities as a dude in a cowl and cape, behaves very oddly.

In addition to the campiness, the film has some very strange issues. These are best handled under a spoiler warning, just in case you’re under 16 or live under a rock.

*** UTILITY BELT OF SPOILERS ***

The biggest break with reality for me here is not the Joker’s face or the weird, campy elements of the film. I can accept those for what they are. What I have trouble with is Alfred (Michael Gough) bringing Vicki Vale into the Batcave while Bruce Wayne is sitting at his computer. Why the hell would Alfred blow Batman’s biggest secret, and do so with a journalist? Even more, once the two have a chance to talk, her reaction is to ask if they are going to try to continue a real relationship. Any human being in that situation would spend at least five minutes screaming, “Holy shit! You’re Batman!”

Another thing is this—at the end of the film, Batman and Vicki Vale are hanging off the roof of a building while the Joker dances above them like a madman. Anyone with even a little Batman knowledge—like the first 100 minutes of this film—knows enough to realize no one is in danger. He’s friggin’ Batman, and he falls off roofs all the time.

*** BATARANGS BACK ON THE BELT ***

There are things I like here. The Joker’s main henchman, Bob (Tracey Walter) is great. He doesn’t do much and doesn’t have a lot of lines, but he’s fun to have on screen as a sort of constant presence. I also really like Michael Keaton in this role. There have been, in the movies, four distinct takes on the Batman/Bruce Wayne character. The current is the guttural and vicious version paired with the savvy playboy in the franchise reboot. Keaton’s Batman is good in a fight, but far less the unstoppable warrior. His take on Bruce Wayne is more interesting. As Wayne, Keaton comes off as a dilettante, a man with too much money and not enough sense or much ability to control that much cash. It’s an interesting idea for the character, and a good one.

Jack Nicholson as the Joker steals every scene he is in, which should come as no surprise. Part of the reason, if not the entire reason for casting him in the role is what he brings to it. Nicholson plays the Joker as a completely unhinged, surreal criminal. He’s Dadaism with legs and a purple coat.

The biggest complaint I have, though, is that for an action movie that really depends on the quality of the stunts and the fights, most of the fights are so dark that it’s impossible to tell what is happening. Someone should have informed Burton that more light in the fight sequences helps the audience to understand what is going on.

The rebooted Batman franchise brought us the fifth actor to legitimately play the role (Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and now Christian Bale, assuming that you accept Adam West’s and George Clooney’s portrayals as “legitimate”). This is a much different incarnation of the Caped Crusader than the earlier versions.

The origin of this version of Batman is covered in Batman Begins, so we don’t rehash it here, which I appreciate. I get tired of watching origin stories over and over, so I’m pleased that there wasn’t one in this film. Additionally, in an interesting choice, there’s no origin story for the Joker (Heath Ledger) in this film. He simply exists. This is a very different Joker than in the first film. This one is not a guy freakishly burned by chemicals, but a man with terrible facial scars in the shape of a huge grin. The Joker makeup is obviously makeup, designed to look as if he’d been wearing it for a couple of days. It’s a great effect. He comes from nowhere, has no history, and no real story other than his own insanity. He gives two versions of how he got the scars, and neither one is likely to be the truth.

The Joker starts the film with a bank heist, and then takes on the Mob, offering to kill Batman for half of their money. They sort of accept, mostly because of the influence of Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts), and all hell breaks loose.

The Joker here calls himself an agent of chaos, and that’s what he is. There’s nothing he does here that makes a lot of sense except as a way to create anarchy, but it works well. Ledger’s performance is one of the great performances in film in the last 10 years, and arguably the greatest comic book film performance ever. He’s horribly disturbing, and it’s great to watch.

Another plus here is that all of the cast from the original film returned with one exception. This means Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon. This time we get Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachael Dawes (instead of Katie Holmes). We also get Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. All good.

All of this is great, but there are some issues here. For one thing, I disagreed with the PG-13 rating. I’m not sure the film deserves an R, but I can’t think of a 13-year-old I’d let see it. The Joker is really scary, and when Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, his burns are absolutely horrifying. They’re nightmare-inducing.

Frankly, I like Batman Begins better.

The obvious question here is which of the two Joker adaptations is better. I prefer Ledger’s performance. It comes closer to the darker version of the Joker I prefer, and it feels very much like it’s entirely a unique vision—there is precedent for the way Nicholson performed the role, but Ledger’s version is its own thing.

As far as it goes, I understand why The Dark Knight was selected to be in the book. I’m not so sure about Burton’s Batman except possibly for the art direction. There are better superhero movies out there that should be included before it. Iron Man, Hellboy, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and V for Vendetta are all better films, and all worthy of watching. Then again, I didn’t make the list, did I?

Why to watch Batman: Jack Nicholson.
Why not to watch: Camp overload.

Why to watch The Dark Knight: Batman the way he should be, and the Joker played to perfection.
Why not to watch: “Dark” describes more than just the superhero in this film.

Forward and Back

Film: Memento
Format: DVD from Rasmussen College Library on laptop.

I’m standing in the library at the school I work at, looking over the two shelves of DVDs we have. We have a couple of dozen on the list that I haven’t watched yet. I pick out a half dozen or so, including Christopher Nolan’s Memento.

Memento is a film that plays with the most basic notions of storytelling, and does so brilliantly. The forms and methods of storytelling have been with us for so long, that to make such a basic and fundamental shift in the actual form of narration is a form of brilliance. It doesn’t hurt that the story, while ultimately simple watched in the correct sequence, is made complex, interesting, and gripping by shuffling it in this way.

I arrive home and immediately have to deal with what appears to be the nightly argument between my daughters. With that resolved, I look at the stack of DVDs I’ve come home with and select one. Memento seems like a good choice for the evening, based on the time and the fact that I do need to get up for work early.

This is a truly innovative film, and it is innovative in a basic way. Playing with the idea of narration is a risky proposition at best, but here it works. While much of the film is confusing, and makes sense only after the entire film is digested, it is fascinating to watch. Each character slowly changes just as in a traditional narrative, but as we the audience gain more and more information about each character, Leonard gains less and less, making him more and more naïve as the narration spools back.

I plug the DVD into the CD drive of the laptop. The film begins and my children run back and forth through the kitchen. Gail has a friend over tonight, so it’s louder than usual. I consider moving in to the bedroom, but I decide I am comfortable where I am.

The bulk of the story is told in reverse order, in color. Each scene here ends where the previous scene began, and this frequently leaves the viewer in the same sort of state of confusion that Leonard must exist in virtually every moment of every day. As this story plays out, it becomes possible to piece together small bits of the story, but there is nothing like realization of what is happening until the very end of the film, which is also the beginning of the narrative.

As the film plays, I recognize particular actors in small roles. I had forgotten that Stephen Tobolowsky was in this movie. I like Stephen Tobolowsky. More surprising for me is the presence of Thomas Lennon, the guy from Reno 911, here playing the much more serious role of a researcher. I find it interesting when directors cast comedic actors in serious roles. I also recall having the same reaction to seeing Michael Hitchcock in Serenity.

The story is completely straightforward, really. However, it is told in two different styles. The first style is in black and white, and generally consists of Leonard talking to someone on the phone. Most of this story explains Leonard’s condition through the example of another man with the same condition. In his former life, Leonard was an insurance investigator, and his most interesting case involved a man with anterograde amnesia. The man, Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky) can’t add new memories, and has no system for dealing with his life. Through investigation, Leonard determines that Sammy’s condition is entirely mental, possibly psychosomatic, and thus his claim is denied.

In the film, Guy Pearce tattoos himself with a pen and a needle. I don’t like needles. Watching something like this, even when I know it’s fake, really bothers me. Thankfully, the scene isn’t too hard to watch.

Aiding Leonard, at least in his mind, are two people. The first is Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), who is actually using Leonard’s bizarre condition for her own ends. The other assistant is Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) who may be a cop, may be the man who killed Leonard’s wife, and may be something else entirely.

I can remember watching this movie in the past. I had a similar reaction to it the last time I saw it. It requires almost constant attention. I’m happy to be wearing a pair of headphones to help me drown out the noise of the kids in the next room.

Leonard’s tattoos are all related to the murder of his wife (played in flashback by Jorja Fox). Leonard encountered two drug dealers raping and murdering her. While he managed to kill one of them, the other got away, and injured him, causing the anterograde amnesia. Now he is driven by revenge.

I wonder about the risks being taken by Christopher Nolan with this film. Evidently, on the more well-endowed version of the DVD, there is a way to watch the film in chronological order, with the black and white scenes first, followed by the color scenes in proper narrative order rather than how they are normally presented in the film.

Leonard gets around his memory problem with two types of note. The first are Polaroid photographs. He takes pictures of everything important to him—people, his hotel room, his car. When needed, he writes additional notes on the photographs to help him remember further. More important pieces of information are tattooed on his body, all done in ways so that he can read them. Tattoos on his chest, for instance, are done backwards so he can read them in the mirror. The tattoos on his legs are upside down so that he can read them when he sees them.

The question the film asks is nothing as heady as the nature of memory or anything like that. As the film continues, the question becomes whether or not Leonard actually killed his wife, or already got revenge on the people who killed his wife. There is no real way to tell. Such is the nature of Leonard’s condition. Even he can’t remember what he has done.

At its heart, Memento is a straightforward tale of revenge and deception. The twist in terms of the story comes in the mental disability of our main character, Leonard (Guy Pearce). Leonard has anterograde amnesia, meaning that he is completely unable to create new memories. He knows who he is, and he knows what has happened to him, but since the incident that drives the film and his revenge, he is unable to add anything new.

Film over. Time for bed. Thankfully, I’ll remember this tomorrow.

There is a natural way that we tell stories. While we might deal with a flashback or two, or a start near the end with a very long flashback that gets us back to the start, for the most part, we like our stories to go in a particular direction: front to back. Playing with these established rules of narration offers only a couple of possibilities. The most likely possibility is that you end up with a mess. The other possibility is that you end up with a story that rewrites in many ways the idea of narration, and you get something like Memento.

Why to watch Memento: Perhaps once in a lifetime, someone creates an entirely new way to tell a story. This is one of those rare times.
Why not to watch: Blink and you’ll end up confused.