100 | William Arnold |
A delicious one-time treat. |
Read More: Seattle Post-Intelligencer |
100 | Lawrence Toppman |
Pearce, who's in every scene except the Sammy flashbacks, dominates the picture through his feral performance. |
Read More: Charlotte Observer |
100 | Owen Gleiberman |
Memento, which may be the ultimate existential thriller, has a spooky repetitive urgency that takes on the clarity of a dream. |
Read More: Entertainment Weekly |
100 | Jack Mathews |
One of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects." |
Read More: New York Daily News |
100 |
A gripping, utterly unexpected noir, glinting with bits of poetry and a hard, deadpan humor. |
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90 | 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. |
Read More: Los Angeles Times |
90 | 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. |
Read More: Rolling Stone |
90 | Desson Thomson |
You're exhilarated from beginning to end. |
Read More: Washington Post |
90 | 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. |
Read More: Village Voice |
90 | Dana Stevens |
A brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Pi." |
Read More: The New York Times |
90 | Rita Kempley |
Unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance. |
Read More: Washington Post |
90 | Maitland McDonagh |
Enthralling or infuriating. |
Read More: TV Guide Magazine |
90 | Lisa Nesselson |
Deconstructs time and space with Einstein-caliber dexterity in the service of a delectably disturbing tale of revenge. |
Read More: Variety |
88 | 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. |
Read More: USA Today |
88 | Mark Caro |
A puzzle movie in which the puzzle is actually worth the time and effort to solve. |
Read More: Chicago Tribune |
80 | 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. |
Read More: Film.com |
80 | 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. |
Read More: New York Magazine (Vulture) |
80 | 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. |
Read More: L.A. Weekly |
75 | David Sterritt |
This unconventionally structured thriller moves at an energetic pace, spurred by a string of clever variations on conventional film narrative. |
Read More: Christian Science Monitor |
75 | Roger Ebert |
A diabolical and absorbing experience. |
Read More: Chicago Sun-Times |
75 | Edward Guthmann |
Bound to be talked about, debated and eviscerated far more than it's understood. |
Read More: San Francisco Chronicle |
70 | David Edelstein |
It's scary to have to puzzle out a plot line scene by scene -- scary and exhilarating, at least for an hour. |
Read More: Slate |
50 | Gregory Weinkauf |
Feels mostly like an audacious prank. |
Read More: Dallas Observer |
40 | 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. |
Read More: Salon.com |
40 | Marjorie Baumgarten |
Once you've seen it all once I bet you'll wish you were watching "Groundhog Day" -- again. |
Read More: Austin Chronicle |