10 Movies Nobody Could Stop Thinking About

Memento remains perhaps the purest expression of Christopher Nolan's genius as a filmmaker - strip away all the big-budget toys and he's an artist doggedly committed to toying around with traditional cinematic form.

Nolan deploys a bewilderingly fragmented narrative structure to place audiences in the mindset of amnesiac protagonist Leonard Shelby (a fantastic Guy Pearce), which while close to impenetrable on an initial viewing, builds to such a flabbergastingly unexpected payoff that you'll surely want to rewatch it as soon as possible.

Nolan's career-long obsession with time and memory has never been more artfully explored than in this movie. It'll make your head spin, but as you revisit it again and again, the story peels back layers to reveal added meaning you missed previously.

With a production budget of less than $10 million, Memento confirms the enduring supremacy of ideas over money, and how all the effects-driven bombast in the world can't compete with a killer idea executed with panache.