Cleverly done, but not 9th greatest

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2001)

As I write this, Memento holds IMDB's 9th spot on the IMDB Top 250 list. This movie is NOT the 9th-greatest film ever made. It's a gimmick film, cleverly done with nice atmospherics and several plot surprises, but still a gimmick film. This seems like a case of "IMDB Syndrome" -- a tendency to vote at the extremes for recent movies, especially the gimmicky or culty movies. IMO, the voting on any movie in IMDB is not to be taken too seriously until at least two years after the movie's release.
The movie's not bad, basically a brief scene at the beginning with a chain of flashbacks until the movie stops. Though the setting is different, the premise is very much like the Gene Wolfe novel, Soldier of the Mist.
Few questions are answered (deliberately it would seem), so if you like nice tidy endings, this isn't the movie for you. If you like movies that require that you pay attention at every moment and that make you reconstruct storylines in your head while you watch, you'll probably like this.
The movie did a good job of presenting the POV of someone whose memory is perpetually slipping away, and who can never be sure of what's going on around him.
Eventually, the series of flashbacks was starting to get a little old, and I found myself thinking, "Isn't it about time for you guys to wrap this up?" The movie was starting to feel padded.
But overall, not a bad movie.