Rememory

I found this on Amazon streaming movies.

This is a sci-fi story, it involves a technique that will likely never be realized, that is inventing a machine that allows a person's deepest memories to be recalled and actually viewed by that person and others, all recorded on what looks a lot like a glass microscope slide.

Peter Dinklage is the lead character as Sam Bloom and it is never totally clear why he does this, but when the inventor of the machine is found dead in his office, with bullet holes in the wall behind him, Sam sets out to solve the mystery, how did the man die and was he murdered? He has to get access to the machine and the memory slides.

Dinklage is very good in this role, if he had grown up to be 6-4 instead of 4-4 I suspect he would be a bigger star and a romantic lead, he has the looks and voice and the acting chops. The movie uses lots of cuts and editing tricks to keep the suspense up, and it works. I enjoyed it more for the character interactions than the story itself.

Anton Yelchin has a role in this movie, filming finished up just a short time before he died in an unfortunate accident in 2016.

I don't know if this is the first time Peter Dinklage leads his own movie, but hopefully it will not be his last, cause he really made this film. He just had me so into what was going on all the way to the big revealed in this murder mystery.

In it, Dinklage plays a man who lost his brother in a car accident, and can't remember the last words he said before dying. It messes him up badly, until he discovers a man who invented a machine that can recall and playback your memories and while he attempts to get a hold of this machine, the inventor mysteriously dies and he gets caught up in trying to find out how he died.

The movie is a little above average. It was an interesting mystery, mostly because of the cleaver plot device that centers around it (The machine that can record your memories, giving it a bit of a Sci-Fi appeal) but the real reason to see the movie is Dinklage who gives a fine performance to focus on rather than any loop holes you might find.

I think this movie took so long to get into theaters because of Anton Yelchin's death. They may have had to do some reediting or reshoots to accommodate his passing. It does not seem to effect the movie any, but who knows how good the film could have been if his passing actually did delay it's release. Plus, he's the other reason I went to see the movie.

I also enjoined Julia Ormond in the film, who played the inventor's widow. The parts she shared with Dinklage especially really pop out at you. I did not go into this to see her, but it was an extra added surprise.

Definitely something great to watch. A decent murder mystery with a cool plot point made really better with the help of Dinklage, Ormond and Anton Yelchin (RIP).

http://cinemagardens.com

I am an easy sucker for any sort of film involving memories (Memento, Rashomon, etcetera) and this one had a plot synopsis that just begged me to take it in. It also made me think of the movie "The Discovery" about a scientist who supposedly finds proof of the afterlife, and while many people are committing suicide, he develops a machine that lets him apparently view a recently deceased person's memories.

I would have liked to see some manner of mystery or even a bit of incoherence done with the memories that are played back in this film. They all look too perfect; perfect vision, perfect audio, camera angles that would require the person to be behaving very oddly (such as an extreme closeup of someone's fingers playing the piano would've meant the viewer would've had their head resting on the piano). The intro video the scientist Gordon Dunn shows at a presentation looks absolutely nothing like recorded memories, and completely like something you'd see in a GoPro promo or some other HD digital camera technology.

The thing about memories, even fresh and recent ones (at least in my experience) is that they can often be an incoherent mess. Sometimes I won't remember large portions of conversations, but manage to somehow understand the conversation that was unfolding. I can "feel" certain attitudes and concepts and sensations rather than hear them. Sometimes the memories are completely wrong, as well; sometimes it's foggy and blue on a summer day, and sometimes just by the act of trying to remember something, I don't so much "remember" as create a fantastical re-construction of the memory.

Nothing of that sort is explored in this movie, and it's quite a shame, because the story that they did go for is very plain and straight-forward. The memories just become a sidepiece and a means of confirming people's stories in a murder investigation being conducted by one incredibly lucky and bold man.

Peter Dinklage is that man, playing Samuel Bloom, some guy whose brother dies in a car accident and who now he is obsessed with getting into contact with Gordon Dunn to use his machine so he can view his own memories, obsessed with remembering what his brother's last words were as he was dying.

In the process, he takes it upon himself to pretend to be various people, question people involved in Dunn's memory experimentation, use the machine to confirm their stories, and so on. He is perfectly at ease using a fake name and taking advantage of having watched people's memories before meeting them so as to better pass himself off as someone who may have worked for Dunn or with one of the subjects.

But this also makes for another thing that the movie just passes over, to its detriment. Peter Dinklage is a little person. There's no mistaking it when you see him. This never comes up in a derogatory or limiting way for him or his character; his character could just as easily be played by any other actor of any other size and nothing at all would change about the film or the character.

But while that's a good thing for him as an actor, it leads to some really odd moments in the movie, as well as a plothole or two, where Peter Dinklage's height would either be a liability for his character, or a benefit for certain characters who are trying to track him down. Knowing that he is a little person would make finding him significantly easier, especially when he thrusts himself into the middle of the murder investigation by stealing the memory recording machine.

It feels like the film was more focused on its plot, blissfully unaware of how predictable it was, rather than filling out the details that could have made the movie much more intriguing and fun to watch. The desire for Sam to revisit his brother's death just to remember his last words loses a significant amount of impact when those words are actually revealed, and it turns out you already figured it out right at the start of the movie when the death happened. It hardly feels fair to label it as a spoiler because of how predictable and ultimately insignificant it was.

It also feels like the filmmaker at some point realized this was a very insipid line to follow, and rather than commit to it in some mildly nihilistic way, they tack on a pointless twist, one which not only plays little to no role in the ending, but one for which, due to them ignoring Peter Dinklage's height, becomes a rather significant plothole.

Overall, this was a movie that had a fun and novel concept to play with, toyed with us with the potential of this concept (the idea of a world in which anyone's memories could be viewed on the spot by others in perfect HD) and proceeded to do very very little with it, more focused on its boring and predictable story than with running wild with its imagination and doing something really memorable.

It's a must see. Peter Dinklage shines in a compelling techno-whodunit that challenges the viewer to explore the concept of intrusive memory. Supported by incredible performances by Julia Ormond and the late Anton Yelchin, Rememory is an elegantly nuanced and disturbing tale that will leave you guessing until the end. A symptom and part of the daily struggle that is PTSD, intrusive memories bring back the past in such a way that you feel like you are reliving that past moment with brilliant clarity, unable to escape it. Rememory looks at the nature of memory and shows the world what it is like to be in the moment of an intrusive memory that seems so real that it forces you question the very nature of reality.

Let me first start out by saying I believe Peter Dinklage is one of the most underrated American actors of our day. I believe that will change as time passes. He is as strong n stage as he is in film. His performance in Rememory is not different.

As I typically do in my reviews, I avoid telling the story of a films narrative or plot. I try to stick to my opinion and what I feel is good or bad about a film on its merits or shortcomings.

Rememory is a unique journey about the concept of capturing memories, good and bad, all the way back to early childhood, and being able to view them in real time on a machine built by a brilliant Psychologist.

This concept may be very "out there" for people to believe but the film tells the story I. A very believable way. It's not hokey in any manner and the story moves at an interesting pace. I felt it started a bit slow but picks up rather quickly about 20 minutes in and is a good ride from that point on.

Acting is terrific and special effects and concept were far above average. The sub-ploy intertwined well with the main story and gives a feel of unease which is a big reason the film works IMO.

Again, Dinklage carries the film on his shoulders and delivers another fine performance as the protagonist on a journey seeking the truth, at his own peril, against a big corporation nipping on his heels once he starts making inquiries into the death of the designer and builder of the "machine".

No spoilers here....I am not a big fan of Sci-Fi but have to say this film felt more like a Thriller and is in fact, and is done very well for a concept that seems highly unlikely despite the advances in modern technology.

Any fan of unique thrillers lead by great acting and original screenplay with an added terrific soundtrack, this is time well spent.