Rememory

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.

Summary (no spoilers)

This movie is about a widow of a wise professor who trips upon one of his inventions that's able to record and play a person's memory.

My Review (no spoilers)

The plot of this movie was a perfect mixture of Mystery and Sci-Fi. When you watch this movie it had a perfect start but towards the end you're going to feel like this is leading nowhere but I would say to keep watching as its going to be enchanting. It had the perfect and unpredictable ending. Peter Dinklage the GOT star did some exceptional acting. Overall a good movie with the perfect ending.

My Recommendation

Yes why not give it a shot.

My Rating

8/10

Rememory - A sci-fi thriller with borrowed plot points and an unsatisfying conclusion. It's definitely worth the price of admission, however, being that it's free on Google Play before it comes out in theaters.

The movie centers around an invention that allows people to view memories from any point in their life. It doesn't get bogged down in the science behind it, allowing the story to unfold. The problem is, it's not a very good story.

Although the memories of these characters are on full display, I never felt like I got to know any of them. The main character, played by Peter Dinklage, is a figurine maker, but is seemingly Sherlock Holmes as well. I don't know how much PTO comes with a job like that, but he spends all his time investigating a murder on his own volition. It never feels like he's truly given a challenge at any point, and the movie is too busy trying to throw you off the scent that it doesn't seem to care.

One thing that jumps out, however, is that the movie makes zero reference to the fact that Peter Dinklage is a little person. His stature is often the main focus of his character on Game of Thrones, but any actor could have gotten this role. Given what he lays out on screen here, the overall movie notwithstanding, it's clear why he earned the part.

Another positive performance is offered by the late Anton Yelchin. He plays a troubled young man on the brink of total mental collapse. He put all he had into his small role, showing that his untimely death robbed us of decades of potential in the world of cinema.

If you want to see a better execution of the technology featured in this movie, I would direct you to the BBC (now Netflix) anthology series, Black Mirror. Each episode is its own independent story, so you can jump in at any point. The one entitled 'The Entire History of You' delves deeper into the topic, and also happens to be my favorite of the entire series. Yes, Rememory is currently free, but you already have Netflix on every device you own. Queue it up. 5.25/10

Man of the moment Peter Dinklage takes main role in this little beauty. I've never been keen on his acting (tortured soul type) - but hey it obviously works. I've been watching him for a long time (check The Station Agent 2003 which is when his career really kicked off) "Space Pants" aside - which is probably the reason for his tortured soul - Rememory is a nice little detective /mystery / Sly-fi (my new term for sci - fi films that aren't that futuristic, you have my permission to use it, the entire new series I'm working on at the moment is Sly-fi.. But I digress..) Finally a film that doesn't concentrate on his size.. although you might still.. He really appears to be spear-heading the small person in a film without prejudice. 7.4/10

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.