Anyway, not a new movie, but it's a -great- movie some of you might not have had the priveledge of hearing about and seeing, so I'll contribute.

Memento (2000)
Directed by Cristopher Nolan, Written by Jonathan Nolan (brothers?)
Lead male role is played by Guy Pearce(The cop with glasses, ed exley from "LA Confidential") , lead female is played by Carrie-Anne Moss(Trinity, from "The Matrix") with Joe Pantoliano as the prime supporting role/antagonist.
Won a global award for it's screenplay and "best female performance" for Natalie, played by Carrie-Anne Moss.

This isn't your basic detective movie, though it has that feel at times. It isn't a center for special effects and ADHD imposing combat scenes, though it does have some raw, realistic violence. Memento really has no typical movie cliche aspects about it at all (unless you take the prime tenet of the story as typical, which is easily forgiveable when you see how it's used). Essentially, a married couple are attacked. The wife is raped and killed, the husband is smashed into a mirror and snaps some vein in his brain that eliminates creation of new memories from that point on, leaving him with a short term memory that erases itself every fifteen minutes. The movie picks up on the aftermath of that event, with the husband (played buy guy pearce) who's also an ex-cop escaping from the hospital ward he was in and seeking to kill his wife's murderer. Before his "accident", Leonard(the husband/cop) was an intelligent, skilled and capable detective. He compensates for his memory lapses by tatooing extremely important things to remember on his body, and by taking pictures and keeping notes. The "problem stage" of the story is really about him being fucked with by people who realize the memory problem he has, and his struggles in figuring out that he's being fucked with, at which point he continues his search for the man responsible for what happened to his wife. The screenplay in this movie is amazing, and makes the viewer fully comprehensive on just how Leonard's world works and how he sees things (at some points, it seems like the movie is going backwards because it's split into fractions of when Leonard remembers things and when he dosn't). Though this may confuse and just annoy some people, and it's true beyond the deeply enthralling storyline and the genius artwork of script and character build portrayed extremely well by it's cast, Memento dosn't have enough tyo offer. But for those of us who appreciate the art of cinema, this movie will blow your mind.

Leonard's story is one that emotionally compels the audience. The amount of sentimental relation and understanding one makes easily with his plight is the same movie goers might have found in great works like "The Crow" and maybe even "Boondock Saints". What Memento surpasses those movies in, however, is it's amount of realism and brutal conveyance of human nature: Leonard being the "good person" whereas the others would be your typical run of the mill asshole. The scenes in Memento bring this realism to you in undetached, undesensitized events of raw human emotion. Aside from that, it's cool to see Carrie-Anne Moss not playing Trinity. She's actually a good actress. The plot has alot of twists, twists which aren't corny, and aren't deployed in any corny manner.

Favorite scene: Leonard has hunted down a suspect who knows Leonard is looking for him, and the suspect starts shooting at him, the two are running through a parking lot practically paralell when Leonard's memory lapses.

Narrative (voice of Guy Pearce, as Leonard's thoughts)
"Okay...I'm running, what am I doing?"
(Leonard glances aside to the suspect guy)
"Alright I'm chasing this guy."
(Leonard turns to begin running towards the suspect guy, who takes the opportunity to shoot at him and misses)
"Okay no, he's chasing me."

I give Memento a 10 out of 10, it's definetly worth anyone's time.

Next week I'll do the only "chick flick" I ever liked: Amelie.