my favorite movie of 2000:

(Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Stephen Tobolowsky. Directed by Christopher Nolan.)

If you want a movie that doesn’t underestimate your intelligence, watch Memento. The anti-hero (Guy Pearce) craves revenge while struggling with short-term memory loss. The scenes in color are in reverse chronological order (e.g. the first one you see happened last in time). Those scenes are interspersed with black and white scenes that are in normal chronological order relative to themselves, but chronologically prior to all of the color scenes. The visual contrast of color and B&W corresponds to a mix of genres and moods: the color scenes are in the mode of a psychological thriller, while the B&W scenes feel more loose and contemplative.

When I saw Memento for the first time, I had a strange feeling afterwards — not necessarily positive or negative, but as if watching any other movie would be almost absurd.