Christopher Nolan- He was born in London in 1970 but later moved to america with his family. He had a love for filming from the age of 7 and pursued this when he was an adult when he became the founder of the production company Syncopy Film and is a director/producer of many hollywood blockbuster thrillers such as The Prestige, which made $109 million worldwide box office and also Inception which are all critically acclaimed. His most well known film and making $158 million was The Dark Knight and set the record for the making the most amount of money in the first week aswell as it becoming the 3rd highest grossing film of all time.



Summary of events- This is a film that starts at the end and goes through to the beginning of which the answers the audience need becomes clear and the puzzle is put back together. Momento revolves a guy called lennie who has a 15 minute memory after getting head injuries from a robbery and he cannot capture any long term memories after this event. Lennie believes that his wife was murdered and raped, in the incident of which made him have memory loss, so is out to find them and seek revenge. You see the death of a detective, Teddy, at the start after Lennie shot him, believing he was the killer but in actual fact was a detective that was trying to help him. Lennie is infatuated with a story about a man called sammy who had the same condition and whos wife made him repeat her dose of insulin to see if in fact he was faking his disorder. The overdose killed his wife and later facts show there was no 'sammy' but instead this was lennies own personal story that he was battling.

How did the opening sequence introduce the thriller genre? 
Straight away you are incaptured by the polaroid picture of a dead body, showing that some mystery/crime has happened and the film will be revolved around murder somehow by the way in which the camera is focused on this item, and this item only using an extreme close up and this is also used when seeing Lennies eyes, to show emotion that he is going through . It also leaves questions unanswered due the audience not knowing why he is holding this picture,who the man may be and what events led up to this man being dead in the photo which is one convention on a thriller. The somewhat soothing yet dreary non-diagetic sound over the top makes it much more intense which is needed for a thriller in order for the audience to be captured by whats unfolding. Although it doesnt give the impression of 'something is about to happen', it makes the you feel very uneasy. 


Thoughts about the film?
I found it a hard film to get my head around at first, with it being played backwards and also the flashbacks (in black and white) being played , so it was alot to think about, ecspecially compared to other films i have previously watched but i was suprised i enjoyed the film as much as i did . The story itself also had many twists and turns that i wasnt expecting meaing i was never 'bored'. Overall i would recommend someone else to watch Momento but if i was to make one critisism, it would be that the ending finished abit suddenly and it didn't go out on a high.