“It remains a dazzling trick that holds up on repeat viewings, and the chilly precision with which Nolan executed it helped define the indie movies of the aughts, from the time-traveling mathematics of Primer to the high school neo-noir of Brick.”
“Memento’s trickery echoes the twisty plotting Quentin Tarantino utilized in the ’90s classics Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but it feels much more mathematical.”
“every movie he’s made has one thing in common with Memento: extreme attention to detail.”
“Nolan has employed that strict framework to pull off dazzling storytelling feats again and again—think of the perfectly-timed dream-within-a-dream heist sequences of Inception, or the showmanship of his Victorian revenge drama The Prestige, which is structured with the practice of an elaborate magic trick.”
“M. Night Shyamalan worked in more sentimental territory but with the same tight focus on plotting and story twists, a trope that eventually tripped him up after early hits like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. The Wachowskis, who directed The Matrix (also starring Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano), matched Nolan’s dispassionate precision on a titanic scale, conjuring action among the monolithic cityscapes he’d eventually mimic in Inception. Indie filmmakers like Shane Carruth (who made Primer and Upstream Color) and Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper) built complicated mysteries within low-budget films, adhering to painstaking logic that watchful fans could unpack, ever so slowly, with multiple viewings.”