20 Most Rewatchable Movies Of The 21st Century

13. Memento (2000)

There's little that's easy about Memento, Christopher Nolan's noirish sophomore effort. Following Leonard Shelby (an excellent Guy Pearce), a man with amnesia that's unable to create new memories, Memento begins at the end and runs backwards, starting off with Leonard killing his partner-in-crime and bit-by-bit explaining how their relationship turned sour. To make things more confusing, the film runs in tandem with a separate story thread in which Leonard relays the story of his disability to a mystery caller. There are also flashbacks, dream sequences and memories that don't turn out to be memories at all.

The crux of Memento's appeal is that our hero is a mystery even to himself, and putting the film chronologically back together in your mind will occupy you for the 113-minute running time and long beyond. It begins with a murder, and ends with another, but what happens in-between will bend your mind more than any film Nolan's made since.

For those simultaneously beguiled and baffled by the director's breakout movie, returning for repeated watches is a necessity: the film ONLY makes sense after a number of tries, but it's such an intriguing puzzle that you'll be happy to oblige.