Memento (2000)

Yes. 90% of real audiences liked it based on 15,994 votes. Critics agree, scoring it 88%.

Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why. Wikipedia ↗

Memento is a 2000 psychological neo-noir thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan in his breakthrough American film. The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance investigator who suffers from anterograde amnesia — the inability to form new long-term memories — following a traumatic head injury sustained during his wife's murder. Leonard uses an elaborate system of Polaroid photographs, handwritten notes, and tattoos inked on his own body to track clues and hunt for the man he believes killed his wife.

The film's most revolutionary element was its narrative structure: the color sequences play in reverse chronological order while intercut black-and-white scenes play forward, eventually converging at the end. This structure placed the audience in Leonard's subjective experience of confusion and disorientation, never knowing what happened five minutes ago and having to reconstruct events from incomplete evidence. The screenplay, based on a short story concept by Nolan's brother Jonathan called "Memento Mori," was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Memento was made for approximately $9 million and earned $40 million worldwide, a modest commercial performance that belied its enormous cultural impact. The film established Christopher Nolan as one of the most intellectually ambitious filmmakers of his generation and directly led to his being hired to direct Batman Begins. Memento's puzzle-box structure inspired extensive analysis and debate — viewers created timelines, diagrams, and essays attempting to determine what "actually" happened, and the DVD release included an option to watch the film in chronological order.

The film is widely regarded as one of the most innovative narrative experiments in mainstream cinema.