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‘Memory’ Review: Michel Franco Gets Unforgettable Performances From Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard

The tough art-house director of 'After Lucia' and 'Sundown' applies his rigorous style to a more optimistic story, presenting an unconventional romance between two damaged-goods New Yorkers.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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“ Memory ” feels like the “Silver Linings Playbook” of Michel Franco ’s career: an unexpectedly accessible romance between two damaged human beings, from an independent director who’s been known to put characters through some of life’s most punishing indignities. For those familiar with Franco’s work, the previous film it most resembles is “Chronic,” though the tough-love auteur spares us the bummer ending this time around. In that movie, he followed a hospice nurse through his rounds, then abruptly cut to black when the guy was sideswiped by a car. Womp-womp. When a director does that early in his career, audiences are right to be wary.

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“Memory” introduces Sylvia in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She’s 13 years sober, the same age as her daughter, Sara (Brooke Timber). Sylvia has fashioned her life in a way that gives her control over the things she can. Resisting the kind of clumsy exposition where people describe their backstory (which might have easily fit into that AA meeting), Franco prefers to reveal his characters through action. Sylvia works at an adult daycare center and keeps her social life to a minimum, compulsively setting the security alarm each time she enters her Brooklyn apartment. She’s hyper-vigilant about Sara’s behavior, forbidding the teenager to be around alcohol or boys.

Long before Sylvia explains her history of assault, her behavior says a lot about her own teenage experience. No wonder she’s creeped out when Saul follows her home from the reunion. But she’s also sharp enough to notice that something’s not quite right about this man, surely drawing on her training as a social worker. After Sylvia’s stalker spends the night on her stoop, she contacts his guardian, Isaac (Josh Lucas), and discovers Saul’s dementia.

Meanwhile, Sylvia’s sister (Merritt Wever) points out that the timing doesn’t line up: The girls transferred to a different school before Saul arrived, making it unlikely that he molested her. Strange that Sylvia’s memory sees it differently. What else might she be confused about? (Her estranged mother, played by ’70s cult icon Jessica Harper, accuses Sylvia of lying. But it’s just as likely that the older woman is in some kind of denial.)

So far, the film could be accused of being rather schematic — of setting up a situation where audiences must decide whether to believe the victim or to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused. Then the characters’ behavior steers “Memory” in an unexpected direction. Isaac asks Sylvia if she’d be willing to be a nurse to Saul, and she agrees. At this point, it’s not clear whether she sincerely intends to help or has some kind of revenge on her mind. Franco resists the reductive path, allowing these two lonely people to bond. Both are fussed over by family members with a tendency to infantilize them. Sylvia’s kid sister assumes the more responsible role, while Saul’s brother has conservator-like control over his charge. Later, we discover what happens when he’s left alone.

Reviewed at Sunset Screening Room, Sept. 5, 2023. In Venice, Toronto film festivals. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: (U.S.-Mexico-Chile) A Teorema, High Frequency Entertainment, MUBI production, in association with Screen Capital, Caste Study Films. (World sales: The Match Factory, Cologne, Germany.) Producers: Michel Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery. Executive producers: Paula P. Manzanedo, Moises Chiver, Jack Selby, Patricio Rabuffetti, Tatiana Emden, Joyce Zylberberg, Ralph Haiek, Michael Weber, Efe Cakarel, Bobby Allen, Jason Ropell.
• Crew: Director, writer: Michel Franco. Camera: Yves Cape. Editor:
• With: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber, Merritt Wever, Elsie Fisher, Jessica Harper, Josh Charles.

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Now that Nicolas Cage has had his stock upgraded as of late (thanks to his lovely performance in “Pig” and his self-aware turn in the recent “ The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent ”), and Bruce Willis has retired, I suspect that Liam Neeson is going to be the next actor who finds himself in the critical crosshairs for doing far too many forgettable movies. His latest, “Memory,” is already his second such film in 2022, and since his list of upcoming projects on IMDb mentions titles like “Retribution,” “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” “The Revenger” and “Cold Pursuit Sequel Project,” it doesn’t appear that he will be disembarking this particular gravy train anytime soon. To his credit, “Memory” is at least slightly more ambitious than most of the similar films Neeson has done recently. But it's certainly not enough to make you overlook how one of our most powerful actors is again wasting his time on the kind of half-baked thriller Charles Bronson used to crank out with depressing regularity during the waning days of his career.

The time around, Neeson plays Alex Lewis , another expert hired killer with a particular set of skills. As this film opens, he's considering leaving the life behind after seeing signs of the Alzheimer’s that has already claimed his brother. Nevertheless, Alex accepts one final job in El Paso, in which he has to bump off two separate people and recover some important flash drives from the first victim. He pulls off the first hit easily enough but when he discovers that the second victim is a 12-year-old girl ( Mia Sanchez ), Alex refuses to pull the trigger and keeps the flash drives for himself as an insurance policy.

Unfortunately, the girl had been pimped out by her father to a number of wealthy and powerful people, including the depraved son of powerful real estate developer Davana Sealman ( Monica Bellucci ), who put out the original hit in order to help her child evade justice. After tying up that loose end, she also calls for Alex to be killed. But even though he's slipping mentally, he's still skillful enough to evade her hired goons and kill everyone remotely connected to the crime. Alex also plants enough clues for an FBI task force led by Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), who also tried to help the girl and feels guilty about what happened to her, to pursue him while always remaining one step ahead of them.

If the basic story points of “Memory” sound familiar to you, it may be that you've seen “ The Memory of a Killer ,” the 2003 Belgian crime drama that has been Americanized here (with both films based on Jef Geeraerts ’ novel The Alzheimer Case ). Although this version more or less follows the same narrative path of its predecessor, the original film, although a perfectly good genre film in its own right, was more interested in its central character (played in a very good performance by Jan Decleir ) as he is forced to reckon with both the weight of his past misdeeds and the cruelties of his present condition. 

“Memory” does begin to work when Neeson gets a hold of script's more dramatically impactful moments, but these scenes are simply too few and far between to be truly effective. Dario Scardapane ’s screenplay tends to put more of an emphasis on the big action beats, which are implausible enough as is and doubly so when you consider that they involve a character with deteriorating cognitive abilities. Although these scenes are handled with some style by director Martin Campbell , whose oeuvre includes one of the very best James Bond films (“Casino Royale”) and a lot of stuff that will be politely overlooked here, they wind up overwhelming the human drama involving Neeson’s character. This is especially evident during a new, less thoughtful finale in which one of the key villains is dispatched in an especially gruesome manner in order to give the gorehounds in the audience a final thrill before the end credits. Other than Neeson, the only performance of note here comes from Bellucci, whose casting here is unexpected, to say the least.

“Memory” is a little better than the majority of Neeson’s recent action excursions and there's a chance it may prove to be better than most of his future projects. However, that doesn't prove to be enough to make it worth watching, and those lucky enough to have seen “The Memory of a Killer” are likely to be disappointed as well. Yes, a little more effort has gone into the making of "Memory," so it's a shame—and an ironic one to boot—that the end results are so forgettable.

Now playing in theaters.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film credits.

Memory (2022)

Rated R for violence, some bloody images and language throughout.

114 minutes

Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis

Guy Pearce as Vincent Serra

Taj Atwal as Linda Amistead

Harold Torres as Hugo Marquez

Monica Bellucci as Davana Sealman

Ray Stevenson as Detective Danny Mora

Stella Stocker as Maya

Antonio Jaramillo as Papa Leon

• Martin Campbell

Writer (book)

• Jef Geeraerts
• Dario Scardapane

Cinematographer

• David Tattersall

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Liam neeson in ‘memory’: film review.

Guy Pearce co-stars as an FBI agent in a remake of a Belgian crime thriller involving a child trafficking ring and a hitman struggling with Alzheimer’s.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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The premise of Memory just might be the mother of all high concepts: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. It instantly evokes two possible interpretations: bruising black comedy would be one, thoughtful musing on life and death the other. In especially deft hands, a third option would meld the two. As directed by Martin Campbell from a screenplay by Dario Scardapane, and even with a couple of soulful actors at its center, that premise plays out as none of the above; it’s a mechanical plot point in a perfunctory actioner that leaves laughs — intentional ones, anyway — and existential meditations by the wayside.

Adapting the 2003 Belgian feature The Memory of a Killer , based on the novel De Zaak Alzheimer ( The Alzheimer Case ), Memory comes equipped with all the accoutrements of the contract-killer genre: the burner phones, the silencers, the laser sights, the Liam Neeson . This time, though, Neeson isn’t the law-and-order guy wielding questionable methods in the name of justice, but the mercenary who is faced with an unacceptable assignment — his target is a 13-year-old girl — and trying to do the right thing before his dimming cognitive lights go out permanently.

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Release date: Friday, April 29

Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres

Director: Martin Campbell

Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane

To believe, as we’re meant to, that Neeson’s Alex Lewis spent his formative years in El Paso, Texas, where most of the action is set, would require its own cognitive disconnect. Then again, the production was shot mainly in Bulgaria, and there’s a vaguely intercontinental, pan-European vibe to the cast, from small supporting roles to Monica Bellucci ’s spiritless rendering of a villainous bigwig.

But the Lone Star State is meant to be more than a state of mind in Memory . It’s meant to put a topical slant on a storyline involving the abuse and trafficking of children. The teenager who Alex refuses to kill is an undocumented immigrant; a detention center for such children proves to be a vicious nexus of public and private interests; and the real-life unsolved murders of countless girls and women in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, haunts and drives a key character.

For all its questions of morality, mortality and politics, the film feels empty at its core, not unlike the sleek modern spaces where the story’s ultra-wealthy, ultra-corrupt and ultra-clichéd scheme and cavort joylessly. Matching the screenplay’s lack of nuance, Campbell ( Casino Royale , The Protégé ) orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together familiar action beats and churning up little that rings true.

As the movie opens, Alex pulls off a hit of gruesome expertise in a Guadalajara hospital, a scene that’s mirrored, with even more blood, in the film’s final stretch. However ruthless a killing machine Alex may be, his humanizing predicament becomes clear when, returning to his car after dispatching his victim, he struggles for a painful moment to remember where he put his car key. The pills he takes are designed to forestall the inevitable, and to help maintain an even keel he scrawls factoids on his inner forearm for easy reference. Neeson signals Alex’s frustration and his acknowledgment of defeat. He’s ready to quit this crazy business, a decision that his Mexico City contact Mauricio (Lee Boardman) rejects, hoisting a fat envelope of cash at him with instructions to kill two people in El Paso, a town Alex knows well.

After dispatching target No. 1, a well-to-do businessman (Scot Williams), and retrieving an item from his safe, Alex discovers that the second would-be victim is 13-year-old Beatriz (Mia Sanchez). With his customary violence, he lets his smarmy local handler (Daniel de Bourg) know that he wants the contract canceled, setting off a new round of cat-and-mouse in which he’s the quarry.

FBI agent Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), meanwhile, has taken a particular interest in Beatriz, who was being pimped by her father (Antonio Jaramillo) and is now orphaned, after a sting by Vincent’s team, the agency’s Child Exploitation Task Force, goes spectacularly wrong. Vincent’s boss, Gerald Nussbaum (Ray Fearon), puts the task force on ice and sends Mexican investigator Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres) packing. But Hugo finds a reason to stick around, and neither Vincent nor his partner, Linda Amisted (Taj Atwal), is eager to pivot to run-of-the-mill local crimes. An El Paso detective (Ray Stevenson) isn’t thrilled to have them around, and Alex, in his last-ditch pursuit of truth and justice, is one step ahead of them all. If only he can remember where he put that flash drive filled with incriminating audio.

Scardapane (producer-writer of the series The Bridge and The Punisher ) advances the story via information drops posing as conversation. Case in point: “You realize we’re talking about one of the most powerful real estate moguls in the country, right?” Bellucci’s Davana Sealman, the mogul in question, pulls many puppet strings in the city, a power that her hedonistic son (Josh Taylor) depends on. The pileup of one-note characters also includes a prostitute (Stella Stocker) working the bar at Alex’s hotel, and a trophy-wife stereotype (Natalie Anderson) who feels like something out of a subpar Raymond Chandler knockoff, or an unintended spoof of one.

The involvement of Pearce is a wink and a nod to his role in a classic of the memory-affliction subgenre, Memento , a taut and masterful thriller in whose shadow Memory withers. Pearce is one of the greatest actors of his generation, and his performance is the strongest, most sustained and convincing element of the film — and one that frequently finds him in a vacuum.

He enters the story delivering a performance within a performance: In the attempted sting, Vincent poses as a john seeking the company of an underage girl. Even after he’s shaken off the layers of scuzz required for that role, there’s something off about Vincent, a sense that he’s uncared for. The explanation arrives in an eleventh-hour revelation that should be crushing in its sadness but is instead awkward in its narrative ineptitude.

To give that disclosure its intended impact, Campbell would have had to stir up certain undercurrents in the characters who interact with Vincent. Atwal comes closest in a final exchange that, against the odds in a movie that can feel propelled by an algorithm, produces a satisfying emotional zing.

However unsubtle the material, Neeson offers unforced glimmers of a soul lost to brutality as Alex wavers between a thickening mental fog and perfect lucidity when the plot demands it. But there’s also a sense of his effortless screen magnetism being shoehorned into a thriller boilerplate. And it’s tempting to imagine, when Alex is staring into the middle distance, forgetting where he is and why, that Neeson might be remembering when he played complex men like Alfred Kinsey and Michael Collins.

Full credits

Distributors: Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films Production companies: Black Bear Pictures, Welle Entertainment, Saville Productions Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres, Josh Taylor, Antonio Jaramillo, Daniel De Bourg, Scot Williams, Stella Stocker, Rebecca Calder, Atanas Srebrev, Lee Boardman, Natalie Anderson, Mia Sanchez Director: Martin Campbell Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane Based on the book De Zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts and on the picture De Zaak Alzheimer by Carl Joos and Erik Van Looy Producers: Cathy Schulman, Moshe Diamant, Rupert Maconick, Michael Heimler, Arthur Sarkissian Executive producers: Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman, Peter Bouckaert, Rudy Durand, Tom Ortenberg, James Masciello, Matthew Sidari Director of photography: David Tattersall Production designer: Wolf Kroeger Costume designer: Irina Kotcheva Editor: Jo Francis Music: Rupert Parkes Casting: Pam Dixon, Dan Hubbard

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Memory Reviews

I do applaud Memory for accomplishing the impossible, which is to make you forget about virtually every aspect of the film by the time the lights go back up in the cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Mar 6, 2024

Memory seethes with evil deeds and evil-doers motivated by nothing more than greed and a lust for power. And for once, Neeson’s character isn’t a blinding ray of light purifying everything around him through sheer will power and clenched fists.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2022

An above-average Liam Neeson action piece...Aimed squarely at an adult audience that doesn't mind lots of plot talk, veteran director Martin Campbell gives th proceedings an usually jagged edge that lifts it above more formula-minded genre pieces.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2022

Personally I think what Liam Neeson should do is order a hit on the role of hit man and have a go at doing something different.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 18, 2022

[Memory] offers only predictable plotting and fitful thrills.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2022

Casino Royale director Martin Campbell makes great use of his locations, but the film is unlikely to linger long in your own memory.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2022

Props to Campbell and Neeson for trying to spice up the usual murderous melange, but <i>Memory</i> ends up just as forgettable as all those other flicks.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 16, 2022

You can pretty much forget about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 23, 2022

... An empty, repetitive, and ultimately, forgettable. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 25, 2022

When it comes to his thriller outings, autopilot is the only speed he [Neeson] has.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 14, 2022

The unnecessarily convoluted psychological thriller “Memory” proves two things: 1) That Liam Neeson, when he wants to, can really act; and, 2) that Liam Neeson acting doesn’t mesh well with Liam Neeson being an action star.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 29, 2022

It is a Liam Neeson movie, no more no less - it is a Liam Neeson movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 22, 2022

... Lots of fights, lots of chases, lots of bullets, lots of death. Lots of lots. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 20, 2022

Although this new film is not exceptional, it has a few aces up its sleeve. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 19, 2022

Memory is ironically named, because it is yet another Liam Neeson movie that you will completely forget about as soon as you reach the parking lot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 19, 2022

Memory isn't a Neeson action vehicle nor the sordid noir the original was, resulting in an acceptable yet inconsequential movie. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 17, 2022

Set to turn 70 in June, Liam Neeson is still on his game in this forgettable action thriller in which he plays a professional assassin suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's/dementia.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 13, 2022

By no means is this thriller destined to become a classic, but it’s a satisfying indulgence.

Full Review | May 10, 2022

I wish I could forget it!

[Neeson's] charm is dulled by Lewis' failing mind and a script that neglects backstory and character development, all of which leave us feeling detached from his performance ... If given the choice to strike Memory from our own memory, we gladly would.

Full Review | May 9, 2022

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‘Memory’ Review: A Trauma Plot

In this contrived movie, Peter Sarsgaard stars as a man with dementia, and Jessica Chastain plays a caretaker with buried family secrets.

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By Manohla Dargis

In “Memory,” a woman haunted by her past meets a man who’s scarcely holding onto his. That’s the setup in the writer-director Michel Franco’s contrived drama with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, whose work in this artsified slab of exploitation cinema is strong enough that you wish their characters would run off to an entirely different movie.

Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with a day job caring for disabled adults. She and her sweet teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), have a spacious, sunlit apartment in an industrial-looking building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There’s a tire store next door and multiple locks on their apartment door. Each time Sylvia returns home, she fastens the locks and arms the alarm with great deliberation, a ritual that Franco repeatedly presents. It’s a habit that like Sylvia’s wariness and physical reserve — she doesn’t readily make eye contact and tends to cross her arms in front of her chest — underscores her guardedness.

One night, Sylvia and her sister, Olivia (the always welcome Merritt Wever), attend a high-school reunion. There, a visibly uncomfortable Sylvia withdraws into herself, but when a man — Sarsgaard as Saul — approaches her, she splits for reasons that become torturously clear only later. He follows her onto the subway and all the way to her building’s front door, where he stays even when it begins pouring. The next morning, Sylvia finds him shivering and near-incoherent, sitting in a spare tire on the ground. It turns out that Saul has early-onset dementia and lives in his handsome brownstone, watched over by his no-nonsense brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), whose daughter, Sara (Elsie Fisher), comes and goes.

Soon, Sylvia begins taking care of Saul part-time, a job that turns intimate and then unsurprisingly romantic. The relationship doesn’t cohere dramatically, alas, despite the demonstrative tenderness and commitment that the actors bring to it, and the story’s multiple gaps in logic don’t help. It doesn’t make sense that Isaac, who comes off as a fairly self-important professional, doesn’t have any hired help when Sylvia arrives, especially given the family’s obvious economic resources. (I also seem to have missed the scene when he runs a background check on her.) Like Olivia’s husband and kids, a collection of bland types, Isaac mainly serves as a convenient bourgeois prop that Franco can swing at before blowing it up.

Chastain reliably holds the screen even if her performance often feels overly studied rather than lived in, never more so than in her scenes with Sarsgaard, whose delicate, quicksilver expressiveness appreciably deepens both the movie and its stakes. You don’t always believe in Sylvia and Saul as a couple, but Sarsgaard makes you want to. Certainly the two actors give you a reason to watch this movie, which grows all the more complicated and then tauntingly nutso with the entrance of Sylvia’s estranged mother, Samantha (a vivid Jessica Harper as monstrous maternity incarnate). Samantha, who’s remained in contact with Olivia, is thinking of moving nearby, mostly, it seems, so that Franco can destroy Sylvia’s fragile equanimity.

Franco, whose movies include “After Lucia” and “Sundown,” likes to approach his anguish-laden stories (of rape, abuse, murder) with relatively calculated coolness and art film-lite trappings. It’s obvious from the get-go that Sylvia is deeply troubled, probably by her past. Although Franco scatters hints here and there, he also withholds the worst until a late, awkwardly staged meltdown filled with tears, shouting and ugly, unsurprising revelations. If until that moment, Sylvia has not yet fully addressed her pain — including in any of the A.A. meetings she attends — it’s not because she’s especially tight-lipped. Rather, Franco saves her big reveal for maximum narrative oomph, turning one woman’s suffering into a packaged spectacle.

Memory Rated R for male nudity. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Review: In ‘Memory,’ two survivors come to a wary bond, even if the past harbors demons

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A guarded Jessica Chastain and a rumpled Peter Sarsgaard make mysterious, sweetly dissonant music together in “Memory,” a touch-and-go drama about connection that’s as steeped in discomfort as it is cautiously hopeful about one’s ability to find peace within it.

Writer-director Michel Franco’s take on an offbeat urban romance — between a social worker and a cognitively impaired, housebound man — has no use for easy or overwrought emotions or snap conclusions. Franco’s story implies that to really see someone on the inside is hard work. And doing so when nobody around you trusts your eyesight, much less your judgment? Even harder.

When we meet Chastain’s Sylvia, she’s the back of a head in a darkly lighted AA meeting. Members heap praise on her for how she’s handled her struggle across 13 years of sobriety, a span of time that corresponds to the age of her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), also in tow.

In the outside world, where she works in adult day care and lives in a tightly secured apartment, Sylvia’s manner is hard-edged and solitary — and when it comes to Anna, who enjoys hanging out with her aunt Olivia ( Merritt Wever ) and same-age cousins, as watchful as a hawk. Silvia looks ill at ease around her extended family, or is it just anyone who’s not her daughter?

Her unease palpably becomes ours, though, when she’s followed home from her high school reunion by a shaggy-looking attendee who then camps outside her building overnight in the pouring rain. Gentle-seeming but clearly not well, Saul (Sarsgaard) is picked up the next morning by his brother Isaac (Josh Charles), which is when we learn that the former suffers from dementia and lives unsupervised in his brownstone, occasionally looked after by Isaac and an adoring niece ( Elsie Fisher ).

Healing, connection, optimism’: Peter Sarsgaard takes ‘Memory’ beyond the dementia

“I find it so gratifying that people are emotional watching this. They have a feeling of unity and optimism,” the actor says.

Dec. 20, 2023

Sylvia, however, is convinced that smiling, polite Saul is actually a figure from her traumatic childhood who recognized her that night. When she initiates a follow-up visit, the gesture appears charitable but comes with a pent-up confrontation in mind. In its clarifying wake, however, a tenderness develops between these damaged souls, one that becomes increasingly difficult to understand for their respective families — including the mother Sylvia won’t speak to, for reasons that become disturbingly clear as things combust in the final act. (Even before we know what we suspect, Jessica Harper ’s few scenes vividly suggest a manipulative affluence worth purging.)

Franco is a cool-headed ironist with a flair for oblique narrative and a fascination with the detached worlds of the wealthy. In taut, violent oddities of disintegration like “New Order” and “Sundown,” his style can translate into a bracing, compelling distance that’s not for all tastes. But because “Memory” is, at root, a story of people finding each other, the vibe is more reminiscent of Franco’s caretaking character study “Chronic,” while still touching on the abiding peculiarities of people who come from money and what’s always simmering in broken people. More directly than his previous films, his penchant for long takes with minimal intercutting seeds an emotional suspense, for us as well as the fragile humans inside cinematographer Yves Cape’s cool, steady frame.

Chastain and Sarsgaard use that time and space well too, playing out what’s unspoken and making real their characters’ budding, unsentimental closeness. There are whole areas of this twosome’s bond that remain unexplained. Ultimately, that feels like a virtue of the movie, rather than a flaw.

Franco’s way with a heartfelt story means foregrounding a feral alertness to danger to get us to appreciate the warmth its protagonists are waiting to bestow. But it’s also what’s admirably adult about “Memory.” It’s a movie that understands fully how nothing about our lives is a given, and that if you look hard enough at yours, there’s always something worth escaping from and running toward.

Rating: R, for some sexual content, language and graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: AMC Century City 15

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Two strangers grapple with hazy 'Memory' in this unsettling film

Justin Chang

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory . via Ketchup Entertainment hide caption

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory .

The Mexican writer-director Michel Franco is something of a feel-bad filmmaker. His style can be chilly and severe. His characters are often comfortable bourgeois types who are in for some class-based comeuppance. His usual method is to set up the camera at a distance from his characters and watch them squirm in tense, unbroken long takes.

Sometimes all hell breaks loose, as in Franco's dystopian drama New Order , about a mass revolt in Mexico City. Sometimes the nightmare takes hold more quietly, like in Sundown , his recent slow-burn thriller about a vacation gone wrong.

I haven't always been a fan of Franco's work, not because I object to pessimistic worldviews in art, but because his shock tactics have sometimes felt cheap and derivative, borrowed from other filmmakers. But his new English-language movie, Memory , is something of a surprise. For starters, it's fascinating to see how well-known American actors like Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard adapt to his more detached style of filmmaking. And while his touch is as clinical and somber as ever, there's a sense of tenderness and even optimism here that feels new to his work.

Movie Interviews

'femininity is not weakness,' jessica chastain says of 'zookeeper's wife'.

Chastain plays Sylvia, a single mom who works at an adult daycare center. From the moment we meet her, at an AA meeting where people congratulate her on her many years of sobriety, it's clear that she's been through a lot. She's intensely protective of her teenage daughter, rarely letting her hang out with other kids, especially boys. Whenever she returns home to her Brooklyn apartment, she immediately locks the door behind her and sets the home security system. Even when Sylvia's doing nothing, we see the tension in her body, as if she were steeling herself against the next blow.

One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is approached by a man named Saul, played by Sarsgaard. He says nothing, but his silent attentiveness unnerves Sylvia, especially when he follows her home and spends the night camped outside her apartment. The next morning, Sylvia learns more about Saul that might help explain his disturbing behavior: He has early-onset dementia and suffers regular short-term memory loss.

Some of the backstory in Memory is confusing by design. Sylvia remembers being sexually abused by a 17-year-old student named Ben when she was 12, and she initially accuses Saul of having abused her too. We soon learn that he couldn't have, because they were at school at different times. It would seem that Sylvia's own memory, clouded by personal pain, isn't entirely reliable either.

Despite the awkwardness and tension of these early encounters, Sylvia and Saul are clearly drawn to each other. Seeing how well Saul responds to Sylvia's company, his family offers her a part-time job looking after him during the day. As their connection deepens, they realize how much they have in common. Both Sylvia and Saul feel like outcasts. Both, too, have issues with their families; Saul's brother, played by Josh Charles, treats him like a nuisance and a child. And while Sylvia is close to her younger sister, nicely played by Merritt Wever, she's been estranged for years from their mother, who refuses to believe her allegations of sexual abuse.

The movie poignantly suggests that Sylvia and Saul are two very different people who, by chance, have come into each other's lives at just the right moment. At the same time, the story does come uncomfortably close to romanticizing dementia, as if Saul's air of friendly, unthreatening bafflement somehow made him the perfect boyfriend.

But while I have some reservations about how the movie addresses trauma and illness, this is one case where Franco's restraint actually works: There's something admirably evenhanded about how he observes these characters trying to navigate uncharted waters in real time. Chastain and Sarsgaard are very moving here; it's touching to see how the battle-hardened Sylvia responds to Saul's gentle spirit, and how he warms to her patience and attention.

This isn't the first time Franco has focused on the act of caregiving; more than once I was reminded of his 2015 drama, Chronic , which starred Tim Roth as a palliative care worker. I didn't love that movie, either, but it had some of the same unsettling intimacy and emotional force as Memory . It's enough to make me want to revisit some of Franco's work, with newly appreciative eyes.

• Briarcliff Entertainment

Summary Alex Lewis (Liam Neeson) is an expert assassin with a reputation for discreet precision. Caught in a moral quagmire, Alex refuses to complete a job that violates his code and must quickly hunt down and kill the people who hired him before they and FBI agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce) find him first. Alex is built for revenge but, with a ... Read More

Directed By : Martin Campbell

Written By : Dario Scardapane, Jef Geeraerts, Carl Joos, Erik Van Looy

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Despite a gifted cast, Memory only evokes better films

If only the forgettable nature of this hitman film featuring liam neeson, guy pearce, and monica bellucci was deliberately ironic.

“I can tell you he’s an American,” declares FBI Agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce), with absolutely unmerited confidence, upon hearing the voice of [checks notes]… Liam Neeson. No disrespect intended to Mr. Neeson, mind you, who’s one of the world’s finest movie-star actors and cinema’s current most dependable old-man ass-kicker. But he sounds about as American as Sean Connery. In a movie where at least three of the leads—Pearce, Neeson, and Ray Stevenson—adopt fake American accents, Neeson’s is, impressively, the least convincing. And that’s taking into account the scene in which Stevenson’s Texas lawman, taking incoming gunfire, yells “ LAHV shootuh! Lahv shootuh! ”

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Neeson plays Alex Lewis, a hitman who’s having memory problems. Notes written to himself on his arms help—a trick borrowed from costar Pearce’s character in Memento— but really, it’s time to retire. And perhaps in real life, hitmen can. But in the movies, they always get forced into one last job, even when it’s clear their employers’ money would be much better spent on somebody who, y’know, still likes doing the thing they’re good at. Instead, suddenly conscientious Alex gets pressured into taking a contract, recoils when it involves a kid, and decides to spend the rest of his short, terminally ill life taking out those who made him do it before the cops and feds can.

Memory is officially a remake of a Belgian movie released in the U.S. as The Memory Of A Killer , based on the Dutch novel The Alzheimer Case . Maintaining the original’s underage sex ring plot and relocating it to Texas and Mexico allows Memory to take on the two biggest conservative bugaboos-du-jour: pedophilia and the border. And in typical action movie fashion, it suggests rather unambiguously that rogue hitmen are better at taking care of society’s problems than incompetent and compromised law enforcement. Not that you should think too hard about the movie’s politics, because it doesn’t seem like anyone involved in making it did.

While his political ear may not be astute, director Martin Campbell , like Neeson’s character, used to be one of the best in his field. An expert at crafting expensive, nail-biting action scenes surrounding iconic, super-heroic characters, he brought style and tension to bear in his James Bond, Zorro, and yes, Green Lantern movies. (Even Ryan Reynolds underrates that last one.) Hell, Vertical Limit , a movie with no memorable characters whatsoever, works only because of the insane amounts of danger into which Campbell hurls his onscreen cast. When it comes to more story-based exploits of men with guns, however, he’s occasionally as adrift as his latest protagonist.

Simply put, the director’s urge to make a big action movie here is as palpable as his lack of a mega-budget to do so. Neeson’s frail older hitman still manages to effortlessly smash heads through windows, and shatter a toilet by throwing a bad guy into it—and in something like a Bad Boys movie, this would all fit the tone, as would Neeson’s disinterest in learning accents. But they stick out as anomalies in Memory , which otherwise tries to be a grounded thriller. That’s even as Campbell clearly gets the most joy out of shooting decadent boat parties, and fancy indoor swimming pools that look like something out of an alien world.

Neeson’s attachment undoubtedly got the movie greenlit, but one of the virtues of its source material, The Memory Of A Killer, is the opportunity its characters give all of the actors to create roles largely from scratch, at least for most American audiences. Pearce, in hair and wardrobe apparently purloined from the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video, does his best to de-glam, at least. But Campbell still films his stars like stars, and Neeson’s supposed dementia doesn’t affect the plot anywhere near as much as it should.

There’s never a moment when anyone might think he risks looking genuinely embarrassing in the way that all Alzheimer’s patients do at one point or another. You could substitute almost any disability, injury, or even phobia into the script and the plot wouldn’t change much. On the other hand, exchanging Ray Stevenson into the lead role might have been more interesting, as he really does look his age in this, while Neeson, more than a decade his elder, continues to defy it.

Nonetheless, it’d be nice to think that the forgettable nature of Memory was a deliberate irony. Then we could grant it bonus points for cleverness, rather than an average grade for just being bland.

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In Memory, Liam Neeson Gets to Act More Than Usual

Even those of us who’ve generally enjoyed Liam Neeson’s recent run of tough-guy roles sometimes forget that he can be a hell of a performer, too. His latest, Memory , directed by action legend Martin Campbell ( Casino Royale , The Mask of Zorro ), offers a helpful reminder that Neeson kicking ass need not mean Neeson on acting autopilot. The film, a remake of the 2003 Belgian thriller The Memory of a Killer , follows a hitman suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, but the dementia element is more a narrative contrivance than a serious exploration of a debilitating illness. (For that, you might want to check out Gaspar Noé’s Vortex instead, also out this week.) But Neeson, who had been an intensely physical actor even before he started playing guys with special sets of skills, conveys the vulnerability, pain, and fear of the character so well that he turns a nothing plot element into something genuinely moving.

When we first meet Alex Lewis (Neeson), he’s posing as a nurse in order to brutally strangle a man visiting his sick mother in the hospital. Our hero is not a good guy: Alex has spent his life killing people for money, often at the behest of gangsters operating in and around El Paso, Texas. But when he’s given a job that involves targeting a young girl, he refuses to kill her. Is this a sign of a humanity he’s always had, or is it a newfound hesitancy brought on by his condition? “You’re going soft,” his boss, Mauricio (Lee Boardman), says, bitterly.

A greater conspiracy is unfolding, however. The girl, Beatriz (Mia Sanchez), was a child-trafficking victim, and a dogged FBI agent, Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce, who himself starred in Memento 22 years ago, a film to which Memory occasionally nods), is hoping she will be the witness to help him take down a massive human-trafficking operation. The conspiracy, however, reaches through the upper levels of El Paso society, including the family of local businesswoman and philanthropist Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci). While Serra and his partners, among whom is Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres) of the Mexican intelligence agency, encounter obstacles legal and otherwise, Alex seems to be the one person who can cut through all that red tape — a deadly lone wolf with what is now a personal grudge and not a lot of time left.

That results in an intriguing confusion of loyalties that the film probably could have done more with; Serra and his crew are torn over whether to try and stop Alex or to let him work his killing-machine magic. But overall, Memory works not so much as a procedural — it’s a bit too simply plotted for that — as it does as a character study. Credit the actors, and director Campbell’s willingness to give them their space. Neeson, in particular, is well-suited to portray Alex’s growing fragility. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, haunted by the images of people he may or may not have killed, his fear and confusion are overwhelming. The actor has always had a thing for suffering; even his action movies are on some level about shame and regret and intense personal pain . But what was submerged in the previous movies is out in the open this time. One scene where Alex cauterizes a bullet wound in his torso with a bottle of liquor and a lighter is so agonizing that I’d believe it if you told me Neeson had actually burned himself.

There’s an interesting edge to the action, too. Alex smashes heads and blows away people (not all of them bad guys, either) with ruthless, automatic efficiency, but it all feels reflexive, as if it’s been programmed into his muscle memory. That speaks to why he’s able to keep offing people even as he seems to be losing his cognitive abilities. He’s been killing for so long that it comes as naturally to him as breathing. That makes for a compelling contrast: On the one hand, we get surprisingly effective and visceral violence — the genre spectacle at which Campbell has always excelled — and on the other, a very real tenderness and anguish that’s quite rare in this sort of flick. In the end, Memory ’s greatest asset might be that it knows exactly what it is — a fun combination of sleazoid action and surprising emotion. It’s the best kind of B-movie.

• movie review
• liam neeson
• martin campbell
• alzheimer's disease
• memory of a killer
• monica bellucci

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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Thriller

Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 29, 2022
• Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis; Guy Pearce as Vincent Serra; Monica Bellucci as Davana Sealman; Ray Stevenson as Detective Danny Mora; Ray Fearon as Special Agent Gerald Nussbaum

Home Release Date

• June 21, 2022
• Martin Campbell

Distributor

• Briarcliff Entertainment

Movie Review

Where did he put the keys? They should be here under the windshield visor. That’s where he always leaves them. He wouldn’t have taken them into the hospital with him. Would he? No, no. That would be crazy. Sloppy. Bad, bad, bad.

They’re not on the seat. Not in his pants pocket. In his shirt! Yes, he put them in his scrubs’ top pocket. That’s right, he was masquerading as an orderly this time. Hospital. Scrubs. Right.

He almost forced himself to retrace his steps back through the lobby and into the room where he garroted his mark’s throat. Blood everywhere. People walking by. Bad. That would have been an amateur mistake. He never makes those. Or … he didn’t.

But things are getting worse.

Alex Lewis has long known that the decline would happen. Alzheimer’s disease has hit his whole family this way. His older brother is little more than an empty … uh, just empty at this point. For Alex, it’s only been little things: a key, a picture, a word, a note. That’s why he’s taken to writing instructions and reminders on his own arm. But for some jobs, like Alex’s, you can’t be plagued with memory loss or the threat of a rubbed-off message.

Killers can’t be losing track of things. Not even keys. In this line of work, it won’t get you fired. It’ll get you dead.

He even tried to quit. But his handler talked him out of it. “Men like us, don’t retire,” he told Alex. But what do you do when you can’t remember the address, the name, the … thingamajig any longer? What then?

Just one more job. Make it a big one. And then he’ll have enough cash to hide himself away somewhere, maybe. He’ll have to leave what’s left of his brother behind. But, hey, soon enough he’ll probably forget him anyway.

Just one last, uh … whatchamacallit. Then he’ll be fine.[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Alex’s next job changes everything, as he’s called upon to kill a teen girl who had been dragged into child prostitution by sex trafficking ring. Obviously, that’s not good. Alex, however, can’t force himself to follow through. But the girl is brutally murdered anyway by someone else. Alex, feeling that he’s close to losing everything anyway, takes it upon himself to hunt down those calling the shots. He also helps an FBI agent named Vincent Serra. Vincent had gone out of his way to help protect the abused girl—who was left homeless after a police sting went wrong.

Both men attempt to bring the powerbrokers behind the much larger trafficking operation to justice. Of course, their methods for doing so are much different. “We all have to die, Vincent. What’s important is what we do before we go,” Alex tells the FBI agent.

Amid a tainted justice system, we see very few good men and women. Vincent is one of a rare breed here.

Spiritual Elements

A Mexican detective wears six St. Mary medals around his neck to remind him of abused and murdered young women that he’s encountered in the course of a human trafficking case.

Someone says a prayer in Spanish and ends it with an affirmative “Amen.”

Sexual Content

We see several different women wearing open shirts or low-cut tops. One of them is in a formfitting swimsuit. Part of Vincent’s investigation into a sexual trafficking ring involves him paying, supposedly, to have sex with a man’s teen daughter. The girl undresses to a lightweight shift, but then discovers that Vincent is wearing a wire when she pulls open his shirt.

Later we see snapshots of that same teen girl being slapped by her father and a short video of her being tossed onto a bed by a shirtless older man. Later still, we see that same man at a yacht party. He strips off his clothes and lays face down on a bed and orders a different teen girl to get undressed. (She’s stopped from doing so.) The party also features an onboard hot tub packed with young women in bikinis.

A wife suspects her husband of an affair and demands he wash off the woman’s perfume. A woman openly flirts with Alex at a bar and later—after Alex slaps down a drunken man rudely hitting on her—the two end up in bed together. We see her in a cleavage-baring slip the next morning.

Violent Content

There’s quite a bit of brawling and death-dealing in this R-rated pic. Alex pounds away at several men in and out of the course of his job. He also breaks a man’s nose with a rifle butt. He batters another guy in a public restroom, smashing the man through a porcelain toilet. He slaps a drunk around at a hotel bar, slamming his head into the bar.

In another scene, Alex beats a killer mercilessly, slamming the man’s head and face into a car mirror and through a window. He then ties the bloodied man into the car and detonates a bomb on the vehicle’s undercarriage. We see him shoot several people in the head, up close and at a distance. He rips open a man’s gushing neck with a wire garrote.

In turn, Alex is also beaten badly by an angry police officer in a police interview. And the guy notes that he’ll take all afternoon to beat a confession out of him.

We’re shown pictures of two young boys with bruises all over their backs. A young girl is battered. We see her later with a bloody bullet hole in her forehead. A woman’s throat is slashed open by a man behind her, and the camera watches her bleed out. An innocent woman is shot in the throat by a gunman. Alex is shot in the side at one point and his shirt soon becomes soaked with blood. He opens his shirt, revealing the wound, then pours vodka on it and lights it afire to cauterize the laceration.

Someone tells a story about his wife getting hit by a drunk driver who then backs up to kill her son so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. A police sniper kills an innocent man. A man is riddled with bullets from police fire. Vincent tumbles out a second story window with an armed man who dies in the fall.

Crude or Profane Language

Some 40 f-words and a dozen s-words are joined by multiple uses of “a–hole” and “h—.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused seven times total (with God’s name being combined with “d–n” once).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Both Alex and Vincent drink pretty heavily in several separate scenes. We see others drinking champagne, wine and booze at bars and at a yacht party. Vincent and a fellow female agent get drunk at a bar. A man and woman drink shots of tequila. A murder victim’s wife is visibly drunk during a police interview.

Two different guys smoke cigarettes.

Alex regularly takes a prescription medication designed to help his Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. A wealthy woman receives injections of a drug from her private physician. And a doctor moves to give someone a lethal injection before he’s stopped. We’re told of a man who was high on meth.

Other Negative Elements

This film declares that criminal organizations have corrupted many in the high seats of power in the U.S. criminal justice system (and in Washington, D.C.). We see several different people in authority corrupted by money and promises of power. And in the end, it’s suggested that murder may be the only way to solve that systemic disease.

Some might winkingly say that Liam Neeson is yet again playing a hero who has something, ahem, taken from him: this time his memory.

But that’s not accurate, really. In part, that’s because Neeson initially plays a true villain here, albeit someone with a conscience that’s starting to awaken. So when he’s not killing people in the film Memory, he’s straining to give heavy handed aid to the real hero before he loses himself to Alzheimer’s.

We’re shown child sex trafficking and gory murder in a crime-riddled world rotted to the core by graft and power. And it’s all part and parcel of a badly broken and horribly corrupted U.S. justice system.

Does that make for a stark social commentary? Maybe. But it also leaves you stewing in a fairly dark worldview. And no amount of orange soda and Gummy bears will make that depressing and often foul viewpoint any sweeter.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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MEMORY (2022)

"a matter of conscience".

What You Need To Know:

MEMORY stars Liam Neeson as Alex, a hitman suffering from an onset of Alzheimer’s disease who’s ordered to kill a young teenager girl rescued from a sex trafficking ring by an FBI agent named Vincent. Alex can not go through with the murder of the girl, but his business partner in Mexico City carries it out and tries to kill Alex. Alex turns the tables on his business partner. He then goes on a rampage against the human traffickers behind the girl’s murder. Meanwhile, the FBI agent and his team try to follow Alex’s trail of destruction and get to the culprits before Alex does.

MEMORY is a riveting, well-directed thriller. It’s one of Liam Neeson’s better movies as a lone wolf action star. Also, Guy Pearce does an excellent job as the compassionate, heroic FBI agent. He’s the movie’s moral center. That said, MEMORY has lots of strong foul language and violence, including some extremely bloody gun violence. Finally, there’s some moral relativism at the end of MEMORY involving vigilante justice by a police officer. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

Miscellaneous Immorality: Human trafficking but rebuked, two bad parental figures, corruption.

More Detail:

MEMORY stars Liam Neeson as a hitman who goes on a rampage after a human trafficking ring kills a young teenage girl from Mexico that he and an FBI agent tried to protect after the FBI killed the girl’s abusive father. MEMORY is a riveting thriller, but there’s lots of strong foul language, some extreme gun violence and some moral relativism when one of the cops working with the FBI engages in an act of vigilante justice at the end.

The movie begins with Liam Neeson’s hitman character, Alex Lewis, finishes a job in San Diego. Using a code, he texts his partner, a hitman who lives in Mexico City, that the job is done. What he doesn’t tell anyone, however, is that he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s and had to write down the hotel and room number where the victim was staying on his arm.

Cut to FBI Agent Vincent Serra engaged in a sting operation with a Mexican detective, Hugo Martinez, to bring down a human trafficker who’s trafficking his own daughter, a young teenage girl named Beatriz. The father gets wise, learns that Vincent is wearing a wire, grabs Beatriz, and threatens to kill her. Vincent distracts the father and makes a flying tackle. However, the two men plunge through a window, and the father fatally cushions Vincent’s fall by hitting a car below first.

Vincent’s boss and the Mexican cop are upset that they can’t interrogate the father to lead them to the trafficking ring’s leaders. The boss decides to stop working with the Mexican officials, but Hugo decides to stick around for a few days. Meanwhile, Vincent visits Beatriz at the immigration detention facility and manages to get her placed in a group home run by the FBI witness protection program.

However, in Mexico City, Alex’s hitman partner, Mauricio, gives Alex the assignment to kill Beatriz, but Alex refuses to kill a child and tells Mauricio he has to retire. Mauricio refuses to let Alex out of the assignment, but when Alex manages to infiltrate the house where Beatriz is sleeping, he can’t do it.

Alex returns to his hotel where he hooks up with a woman in the hotel bar. While they’re sleeping in his room, he has a nightmare about Beatriz being killed and calls the local FBI to warn them about Beatriz. However, Vincent and his FBI partner are too late to save Beatriz, and Alex appears at the group home to see paramedics place Beatriz’s body in the Coroner’s van.

Alex returns to his hotel room to tell the lady there to leave and never come back to that hotel. Out in the parking garage, however, Alex notices that someone has placed a bomb under the car. His friend Mauricio suddenly appears and starts shooting at him. A gunfight breaks out when the woman from the hotel room suddenly appears telling Alex he forgot his pills. Alex tries to save the woman, but she gets shot dead in the crossfire. Alex manages to sneak up on Mauricio and knock him out. Cut to Alex putting the woman’s body in the trunk of his rental car with Mauricio tied to the steering wheel. He says goodbye to Mauricio, then hits the detonator, causing the car to explode.

Alex starts a rampage to kill the people behind the trafficking ring who had Beatriz murdered. Meanwhile, Vincent and the FBI, and the Mexican cop, try to follow Alex’s trail of destruction and get to the culprits before Alex does.

MEMORY is a riveting, well-directed thriller. It’s one of Liam Neeson’s better movies as an action star. Also, Guy Pearce does an excellent job as the compassionate, heroic FBI agent. He’s the movie’s moral center.

That said, MEMORY has lots of strong foul language, including excessive “f” words and some strong profanities. The movie also has lots of strong violence, including some extremely bloody gun violence. In one scene, Neeson has to take care of a bullet wound in his stomach. Finally, there’s some moral relativism at the end of MEMORY involving vigilante justice by a police officer. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

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The Idea Of You Movie Made 1 Major Book Character Completely Unrecognizable (& It Worked)

• The Idea of You movie improved by aging Izzy from 12 to 16, giving her a more mature and relatable personality.
• Izzy's response to Hayes and Solen's relationship in the movie is more understanding and supportive compared to the book.
• The changes made to Izzy in the movie version enhanced the mother-daughter dynamic and added depth to the film's themes.

Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine’s romantic comedy, The Idea of You , made a change to a major book character, and it made the movie better. Based on the book by Robinne Lee of the same name, The Idea of You has been receiving great reviews because of its honest portrayal of a complex romantic relationship. Even though the movie focuses on the whirlwind romance between Hayes and Solene, The Idea of You still manages to be more than a typical rom-com by delving into major themes that several couples grapple with.

The Idea of You’ s ending is different from the book , but the filmmakers mostly stuck to the source material. However, it is worth noting that the ending is not the only thing that sets The Idea of You movie and novel apart. When a movie is based on a book, it's common practice for filmmakers to make changes to some characters for various reasons. This may include making the character more relatable to audiences so that they can add a uniqueness to the movie that the source material is lacking.

How Old Are Anne Hathaway & Nicholas Galitzine? The Idea Of You's Age-Gap Explained

Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine star in the age-gap romantic comedy movie The Idea of You, but how old are they compared to their characters?

Izzy In The Idea Of You Movie Is Completely Different From Her Book Character

In The Idea of You book, Izzy is a 12-year-old middle schooler who is obsessed with August Moon. However, in the movie adaptation, Izzy is a 16-year-old high school sophomore who thinks August Moon is “ So seventh grade ,” and is into feminist musicians. The age difference between the book version of Izzy and the movie version gives her a completely different personality and level of maturity . As a 12-year-old, Izzy is not old enough to understand the complexities of romantic relationships.

Izzy’s response to Hayes and Solene’s relationship in Lee’s version of the story is vastly different from her reaction in the movie. In the book, Izzy finds Hayes and Solene kissing and is angry with her mother. Her outrage is further magnified by the fact that she is relentlessly teased about her mother’s new boyfriend at school. However, the movie version of Izzy is more understanding of Haye’s and Solene’s relationship . Despite being initially shocked by their romance, Izzy is supportive of Solene and just wants her mother to be happy.

10 Biggest Changes The Idea Of You Movie Makes To The Book

With any movie adaptation of a beloved book, changes are made to fit the film format and please audiences, and The Idea of You had some big ones.

Izzy's Changes In The Idea Of You Helped The Movie's Themes

The fact that the movie version of The Idea of You aged Izzy served the story well. When Izzy becomes aware of Solene and Haye’s relationship, she comes to her mother’s aid instead of being angry at Solene for keeping her relationship a secret . At 16, Izzy was capable of recognizing that the media was treating Solene horribly because she was older than Hayes.

Further, Izzy’s maturity created a space for her and Solene to have open conversations about relationships that they wouldn’t have had if she had been a 12-year-old. The mother and daughter have a much better dynamic, which is reflected in the way that Izzy stands up for Solene amidst the media circus. Additionally, as a high schooler, Izzy had aged out of her obsession with August Moon, which made it easier for Solene to be with Hayes in The Idea of You .

The Idea of You (2024)

Director Michael Showalter

Release Date May 2, 2024

Cast Mathilda Gianopoulos, Jordan Aaron Hall, Anne Hathaway Nicholas Galitzine, Perry Mattfeld, Ella Rubin, Reid Scott, Annie Mumolo

Runtime 115 Minutes

The Substance: A Masterful Body-Horror Film at Cannes | Review

• May 20, 2024

MOVIE REVIEWS

Cannes 2024

Coraline Fargeat outdoes Titane and brings body-horror to Cannes: Demi Moore is impressive

by Federico Pontiggia

Here it is, the new Titane . Although it shares some poetic-stylistic similarities with Julia Ducournau’s infamous Palme d’Or winner, there’s no comparison: it’s significantly better.

Addressing themes through images and sounds, Zeitgeist and authorship, drawing from various sources (from The Picture of Dorian Gray to Frankenstein , from Mulholland Drive to All About Eve ), and encompassing body-horror and female empowerment, Coralie Fargeat ’s second film, made in the USA, competes at Cannes 77: The Substance , backed by Working Title and Universal, although it feels like an A24 production.

The Substance injects into the veins and changes lives, offering a better version of oneself: younger, more beautiful, more perfect. The only condition is to share time with an alter ego: one week each, maintaining balance, or else…

Thus, “You, but better in every way,” the revolutionary product based on cell division, is ideal for Elizabeth Sparkle (an indomitable Demi Moore), a once-certified film star on the Walk of Fame and now a fitness television star à la Jane Fonda 2.0, who is about to be replaced by her ghastly boss, broadcaster Harvey (Dennis Quaid), representing the male, sexualizing gaze. The split will catalyze the epiphany of Sue (Margaret Qualley, from Yorgos Lanthimos ’ Kinds of Kindness ), who is indeed younger, more beautiful, and… more determined.

Born in Paris in 1976, Fargeat seems to revisit a theme explored in her 2013 short film Reality+ , where a brain-implanted chip allowed people to see and be seen as models, while the blood and gore undoubtedly come from her first gory feature film, Revenge , where a raped and abandoned girl in the desert returned thirsty for vengeance.

The Substance is filmed divinely, but by a lesser god: the rule is Instagram, reels, and culinary trends, the rule is TikTok with dances and twerking, while the manifestation of the substance is pure unboxing. The direction is contemporary, driven by social media art, reflecting on the society of image and spectacle, perfectly fitting the film’s ideology of the present-day obsession with image.

“Pretty girls must always smile,” preaches Harvey, and here’s Venus Sue, younger, beautiful, and high-performing, created through unorthodox parthenogenesis to match societal and Elizabeth’s expectations. But how long can this balance last before internal conflict erupts?

The impending competition will eventually transform the Janus-faced duo into the Monstro Elizasue. For every pixel of beauty Sue gains, Elizabeth experiences equal and opposite aging and incapacity, physically and mentally. Did you really think only Dorian Gray’s portrait aged? Thus, how much will our ambition, our will to persist through image and imagination, force our identity and nullify our existence, creating a homicidal and essentially suicidal alter ego?

Fargeat has some good ideas, derivative but effective, with strong images and a firm, ruthless, and bloody grasp on the genre – how much will rival David Cronenberg like this film? – and a sharp dive into showbiz and social extensions, with the perfect and symptomatic choice of Demi Moore as the anti-heroine, forced to birth and nourish the simulacrum of herself from her own spine, a copy of an original too old to fit global mass media consumption.

It’s not a film for everyone, but it will resonate with many: one might not be thrilled by it, as some aren’t, but cannot deny its greatness and definition, quantity masquerading as quality.

Here, it’s more Cronos than Titane , and it’s intriguing that the broken pact, the seven days of this re-creation, is about time, not space.

Moore performs raw and prosthetic, worthy of an award, while Qualley declares the future is hers, beyond the role.

As Cronenberg meets Lynch, and perhaps an Elephant Woman , the casting observation sizzles: “Should have breasts in the middle of the face.” What if we got what we wished for?

PS: Did we miss the intended feminism, did Fargeat omit it, or is it in the monstrous blood rain?

Cinematografo , May 20, 2024

• More: Cannes 2024 , Coralie Fargeat , Federico Pontiggia , Movie reviews , The Substance (2024)

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The Almond and the Seahorse

Release date

10 th May 2024

The amygdala and hippocampus are two parts of the human brain that work together, processing memory and emotions. According to the film The Almond and the Seahorse , co-directed by Celyn Jones and Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Tom Stern: “They are the parts that make us, us.” What happens when these parts are damaged or changed? How does one live life after a trauma not remembering the “before”? These are the questions asked by the feature starring Rebel Wilson, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Trine Dyrholm.

Adapted from Kaite O’Reilly’s play of the same name, The Almond and the Seahorse follows Sarah (Wilson), an archaeologist looking after her socially disinhibited husband Joe (Jones), who has severe short-term memory loss. At Open Field Traumatic Brain Injury Hospital, she meets Toni (Gainsbourg). Toni’s partner Gwen (Dyrholm) suffers from retrograde amnesia. Sarah and Toni find solace in each other, their relationship built on comfort, sex and longing for the people they love who no longer remember them.

With a talented cast, the film explores the impact on both parties in a relationship affected by such afflictions: the ones who suffer from memory loss, and their loved ones who remember. It navigates through the different aspects of a brain injury, showcasing the varying physical and emotional effects it can have on people. For Joe, he cannot live independently without a detailed and child-like list of things to do. His feelings of infantilisation permeate through his every interaction with Sarah, reading her tone as patronising rather than instructive, whereas Gwen wakes up every day missing 15 years of her life. She has to constantly reconcile with her ageing body and the feeling of lost time. The film perhaps focuses too heavily on Sarah and Toni, their struggles and their inability to cope with their given situation. While an important aspect to explore, it treads a little close to romanticising their frustration, in the same way Sia’s film Music projects the struggles of autistic individuals onto their families and loved ones.

A change of genre for Wilson, The Almond and the Seahorse tests her range as an actor, and she absolutely delivers. While the script can be stilted at times, with too much in the way of textbook speak and scientific explanation, each of the actors do well in creating variety in their delivery, showcasing the effects through action and facial expression, cutting through the repetitive dialogue. The repetition does work on a metaphorical level, however, because, according to the film, it’s one of the ways to help the brain adapt to changes. Cinematography is also used to capture the themes of the feature, with a focus on reflections and transparent surfaces, such as mirrors and windows. This visualises the divide of a person before and after their memory loss, and also elucidates the feeling of being trapped in the same repetitive cycle just to live. There’s a nostalgic quality to the score with its heavy use of piano, evoking that feeling of trying to remember something – a song one may perhaps have forgotten – or a sense of déjà vu. All of these motifs come together to ruminate on the concept of memory and how that in turn makes up a person’s life and personality.

The Almond and the Seahorse is a thought-provoking piece that explores memory loss in an uneven but genuine manner. There’s an effort to focus on the individuals suffering from the disability, but at times the narrative skews too far toward the friends and family affected by the fallout. Still, the central theme of memory and emotions making up the core of a person remains at the forefront, carried through in the production and nuanced performances by the actors. The Almond and the Seahorse is a dramatic reconciliation with hard truths to tell.

Mae Trumata

The Almond and the Seahorse is released in select cinemas on 10 th May 2024.

Watch the trailer for The Almond and the Seahorse here:

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bronx Zoo 90’ on Peacock, a Three-Part Documentary Look at the Worst, Most Chaotic Season in New York Yankees’ History

Where to stream:.

• Bronx Zoo '90

‘Bronx Zoo 90’: DJ Caruso And Joel Sherman On Why The 1990 Yankees Were Such A Crazy, Awful Team — And Why It’s A Redemption Story

‘bronx zoo ’90: crime, chaos and baseball’ is the antidote to the recent glut of overly sanitized sports docuseries, how ‘moneyball’ became the most enduring baseball movie of the 21st century, how to watch yankees-marlins on amazon prime video: start time, streaming.

For most of the last thirty years, the New York Yankees have been synonymous with success; even if they don’t win it all, they’re pretty much always good. In 1990, though, that wasn’t the case: the Bronx Bombers were a dumpster fire, bad on the field and embarrassing off of it. That chaotic season–the focus of Bronx Zoo ‘90 , a new three-part documentary streaming on Peacock –was miserable for fans, but helped lay the groundwork for the dynasty years to follow.

BRONX ZOO ‘90 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: There’s a lot of moving parts when you tell the story of the 1990 New York Yankees, but they’re all moving around the late George Steinbrenner . He’s not around to tell the story, but Steinbrenner features prominently in archival footage as he crows to the media about his various grudges related to his team’s failings. That core is bolstered by a deep roster of interviewees from in and around the Yankees–reporters, announcers, coaches, former players, all who still have a lot to say about The Boss and that cursed season.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s shades of A Season on the Brink here, but more than anything, it recalls The U , the ESPN 30 For 30 documentary that profiled the chaotic 1980s Miami Hurricanes college football teams. Those teams were a lot more successful than the 1990 Yankees, of course, but in terms of a team full of characters and legal troubles, they’re a handy comparison.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s plenty of talking heads weighing in here, including ones who really capture the essence of New York at the time, voices like veteran local news anchor Rosanna Scotto. But the most intriguing presence is that of current Yankees general manager Brian Cashman–a front office assistant in 1990–who’s more than happy to talk about the chaos that his former boss sowed at the time.

Memorable Dialogue: “He was huge. He was a giant. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the greatest person…”, Yankee executive Brian Cashman says, recalling the exploits of eccentric-at-best and extremely-criminal-at-worst Yankee outfielder Mel Hall. Putting a finer point on the matter, news anchor Rosanna Scotto recalls, “when I look back and think that Mel went to a sixteen-year-old’s prom… and that prom photo was in the Yankee Yearbook… what??? Are you kidding me? How was that acceptable?”

Sex and Skin: There’s some frank discussion of sexual improprieties, but the skin tops out at a shirtless Deion Sanders.

Our Take: In 2023, the New York Yankees had their worst season in more than three decades… and they finished 82-80. The fact that finishing with a winning record can be a generational low point illustrates what a high standard the franchise has set in recent years. Sure, they haven’t won a title since 2009, but the Yankees are almost always good, and hardly embarrassing.

The 1990 season was a different story.

It’s not just that the 1990 Yankees were bad. To be clear, they were quite bad–finishing in last place in the AL East with a record of 67-95, their most losses since 1912. That disappointment on the field was just the tip of the iceberg, though. The personalities running through the Bronx that year ranged from erratic and arrogant to outright criminal, and they nearly tore apart one of sports’ most storied franchises.

Where to start?

The team’s one real star, Dave Winfield, was traded away at the tail end of a decade-long vendetta waged by team owner George Steinbrenner (below), who would eventually be suspended from baseball for hiring a gambling addict to dig up dirt on the slugger.

The team’s marquee offseason signing, troubled pitcher Pascual Perez, blew out his arm three starts into the season.

The team’s flashiest player–two-sport star and current Colorado Buffaloes head football coach Deion Sanders–was great at drawing attention, and not terribly great at anything else on the field.

Then there’s Mel Hall, an erratic outfielder who surprised teammates by bringing live cougar cubs into the clubhouse–and probably should’ve drawn more negative attention at the time for his “relationship” with a sixteen-year-old girl. (Hall would later be sentenced to more than 40 years in prison for unrelated sex crimes against minors.)

In short: the 1990 New York Yankees were as big a disaster as any major professional sports team in recent memory. Things couldn’t have gone worse that year. And yet… 1990 helped lay the groundwork for one of the greatest dynasties in baseball, the late-’90s Yankees that won four World Series championships in five years. They drafted future Hall of Famers that year, and the suspension that Steinbrenner earned for his war on Winfield probably kept him from rashly trading any of them away before they could win pennants for the Yankees.

Bronx Zoo ‘90 is an entertaining–if often-unsettling–look at this season on the brink. It’s a lively three-episode run that clocks in around the length of a feature-length movie, and there’s more than enough drama to fill that runtime. A great number of people in and around the team participate, and the story moves along briskly. Whether you love or hate the Yankees, it’s a heck of an artifact; there’s no way a sports team could be bad in this way today.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you love the New York Yankees, Bronx Zoo ‘90 is a reminder of how far the team came after those chaotic days. And, y’know, if you hate the Yankees? Well, it’s pretty darn entertaining to watch them be this bad. Either way, it’s certainly interesting.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter ,  is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Technical details, fire tv stick 4k (2nd gen), alexa voice remote (3rd gen).

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Customer reviews.

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers like the streaming capabilities, quality, ease of installation, and picture quality of the digital device. For example, they mention it's worth the money, easy to set up, and intuitive. Some are happy with performance. That said, opinions are mixed on remote control, connectivity, and sound quality.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers like the performance of the digital device. They say it works well, is faster, and is a quantum leap improvement in performance. Some mention that it connects quickly to their TV and is ready to use in no time.

"...That’s me!The performance is great . The picture quality is awesome, and I haven't experienced any lag or buffering issues...." Read more

"...Value for Money: Considering the quality, performance , and access to a vast library of content, the Fire TV Stick 4K offers incredible value for..." Read more

"I’m not very tech savvy, but this was extremely easy to set up and also to operate . It’s “plug and play” easy...." Read more

"...had the FIRST fire stick and that thing was begging to be put down- it was slow , froze often, and had very little space...." Read more

Customers find the installation of the digital device to be easy. They mention that it's very easy to set up, use, and program the remote. They also say that it easily connects to the screen and does exactly as it should. Customers also say it'll navigate through movies and shows than the previous version.

"...fire stick makes it easy to find what you’re looking for with its easy to use menu and voice search feature. The voice feature is awesome...." Read more

"...It's intuitive and user-friendly, making it easy to navigate through the vast content library. The voice remote with Alexa is a game-changer...." Read more

"...It’s “ plug and play” easy . I purchased it as a way to watch streaming services so I could discontinue paying for overpriced cable service...." Read more

"...I would definitely recommend considering how easy it is to use and how many apps it offers, this is so much better than just paying for live channels." Read more

Customers like the quality of the digital device. They say it's worth the money, easy to install, and navigate. Some say that it saves quite a bit of money.

"...The available content is surprising ...." Read more

"...Value for Money: Considering the quality , performance, and access to a vast library of content, the Fire TV Stick 4K offers incredible value for..." Read more

"...This was a great purchase for my home and it allows access to all the streaming apps I use. The price can’t be beat.So long, cable TV!" Read more

"...So one stick in one tv and two remotes working it. One stick dead ...." Read more

Customers are satisfied with the picture quality of the digital device. They mention that it has stunning picture quality, clear, bright, and rich in color. They are also impressed with the video quality, saying that it's crisp and clear.

"...That’s me!The performance is great. The picture quality is awesome , and I haven't experienced any lag or buffering issues...." Read more

"...of the essence with streaming devices, and the Fire TV Stick 4K doesn’t disappoint . Apps load quickly, and switching between content is seamless...." Read more

"...With support for 4K Ultra HD , HDR, and Dolby Atmos audio, you'll feel like you're right in the middle of the action from the comfort of your own..." Read more

"...It has a good picture on ordinary rental TVs . It was easy to set up at home before we took it on its first trip...." Read more

Customers are satisfied with the streaming capabilities of the digital device. They mention that it has impressive streaming capabilities, and the features are the very best for streaming. They say that the streaming is seamless, easy to navigate, and able to enjoy streaming live TV, latest movies, and TV shows. They also appreciate the great streaming quality, and say that switching between menus and different streaming options is nearly instantaneous.

"...to the all-new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, and it has completely transformed my streaming experience ...." Read more

"...movies and TV episodes, support for Wi-Fi 6, and the ability to watch free and live TV , this powerful device offers endless entertainment options in..." Read more

"...The streaming and video quality is excellent ...However:The bad thing is that the audio/ sound quality is horrible...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the connectivity of the digital device. Some mention that the Bluetooth connects immediately, it is capable of connecting to 5G Wi-Fi, and it connects to their TV without much of a hassle. However, others say that they had issues pairing with their TV and having issues with the remote connectivity.

"...But we started having connectivity issues and lagging while playing videos...." Read more

"...Extras: One of my favorite features is the ability to use Bluetooth headphones for private listening ...." Read more

"...Now no connectivity on the new stick and the new remote works on the older stick in my bedroom. So one stick in one tv and two remotes working it...." Read more

"...This new one is fast, fast, fast. The remote didn't "attach" very smoothly , so I mostly just use the old remote, but I can pretty much use either..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the remote control. Some mention that it works perfectly, is handy, and simple. They also love the Alexa remote. However, others say that it doesn't work after only few uses, is cheap, and is difficult to see what is on.

"...to find what you’re looking for with its easy to use menu and voice search feature . The voice feature is awesome...." Read more

"...The voice remote with Alexa is a game-changer ...." Read more

"...Even TiVo streams. There is no numbers on the remote of the firestick...." Read more

"...an AppleTV device on another set, and I feel like the Firestick remote is easier to use and has volume control...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the sound quality of the digital device. Some mention that the voice feature is awesome, the audio on Roku tv greatly improved with fire stick but remains poor on RoKU, and the support contributes to a more immersive audio experience. However, others say that when they went back, there was zero sound, the dts true HD and ddr hd master audio is not handle correctly, and that the volume seems to vary.

"...The voice feature is awesome . I love being able to speak into my remote...." Read more

"...And music doesn't sound good either. It did give me access to apps (including Prime) but I cannot even watch any of them because the audio is..." Read more

"...With support for 4K Ultra HD, HDR, and Dolby Atmos audio , you'll feel like you're right in the middle of the action from the comfort of your own..." Read more

"...P.S. seems like Max volume level is turned down compared to some other apps kind of a bummer...." Read more

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