Memento

   Nowadays Christopher Nolan is known and highly respected for the overrated Inception and highly popular Batman re-imaginings. Back in 2000 he made a lesser-known film called Memento, which actually outshines some of his recent work.

    Memento, which was his second full-length feature, was based on a short story called "Memento Mori" by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is revealed as an unreliable narrator, and you have to take what he says a face value. Hit on the head during an attack on him and his wife, Leonard has no short term memory.

    It's not amnesia, he explains, but he probably won't remember their conversation in a few minute's time. Actually, it's a specific kind of amnesia, called anterograde amnesia. Although it can be implausible at times, Memento is no cheap soap opera, nor a cheap exploitation of it's subject matter. Leonard cannot remember anything that occurs after the accident. In order to create "new" memories, he writes notes or tattoos details on his skin.

 On his hand is printed "remember Sammy Jankis," and a sideplot reveals the sad story of an older man with his condition. Leonard's mission is to find and kill the men who raped his wife and caused his head injury. He is helped by a suspicious, flippant cop named Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a manipulative she-bitch whose drug dealer boyfriend is recently missing.

    He finds neither of them totally trustworthy and must rely on himself to find the perpetrators. But can he? The film is cleverly structured and told in reverse, so that you gradually move on to the earlier events in the story. Guy Pearce, a slightly more inconspicuous actor, was picked by Nolan over superstars like Brad Pitt. He does a good job, showing Leonard's confusion and resolve, although he is not as compelling as Ralph Fiennes in David Cronenberg's similarly mind-bending thriller Spider.

    Memento, in it's darkness and ambiguity, can easily pass as film noir. Another noir-ish element is the dark developments of its characters. Even Leonard's beloved wife is revealed to not be all she seems. Although one of Nolan's earlier works and not a cinema-packer like The Dark Knight, Memento deserves a wide viewership and stands as a capable thriller with an outstanding twist.

El Bola

   Shortly into El Bola, the twelve-year-old protagonist overhears a woman at his family's shop tell his father that "if we were Pablo's age, we wouldn't have any problems." If only that were true. Not only is that false in general terms (cartoonist Bill Watterson once said that "People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children,") but Pablo is living with a load that would be unbearable for anyone, in a household where breathing could get one beaten.

 El Bola is a full-blooded film about child abuse, yet lacking cheap shock value (Joan Crawford smudged with face cream, screaming "NO WIRE HANGERS!" while her little daughter cowers, comes to mind.) Instead of a larger than life -- not to mention over the top -- performance as the crazy parent that wins a Razzle, this movie concentrates on the children affected. Not only that, but it directs these performances well, which is hard to do.

     Sad-eyed Juan (José Ballesta), as Pablo, is the emotional center of the film. Pablo calls himself  "Pellet," named after a little ball he keeps for luck, which doesn't seem to do him much good.  He harbors an almost dog-like desire for a close friend, instead of the group of kids with whom he plays a dangerous game on the train tracks, further jeopardizing his safety, This security is found with Alfredo, the rough-around-the-edges son of a tattooist, who doesn't take to him at first, when he finds his pleas for friendship desperate-bordering-on-the-creepy. They bond quickly at an amusement park, taking us to the main conflict in the film, when Pablo's sadistic pop, Mariano, finds his son's aloneness threatened and tries to drive other people out of his life.

     Alfredo's family's a wonder to a kid who has never known a home life without violence and painful punishment. A liberal, playful bunch, they talk about just about anything and joke and laugh at the dinner table, a far cry from Pablo's family, with his mother yelling at his incontinent grandmother and his father constantly comparing Pablo to their other son who died in a car crash. But Alfredo's life is far from perfect. His father has a temper as well. His gay godfather is dying from AIDS, and he isn't allowed to see him due to the state he's in.

   The amazing thing about this film, which won the Spanish Academy Awards, and the child actors who have chosen to work in it, is the naturalness. The kids are not dumbed down or made into pretentious little douches who must read the dictionary every night before bed.  They're living, breathing, thinking humans. (I'll underline "thinking" for future filmmakers to pay close attention to). They talk about death, sickness, food and phallic tattoos (can you get one? I don't know, and I suspect they don't either.) The dialogue seemed rarely scripted and very natural.

   So what?  I won't give a four-star rating, because, well, the character development isn't quite strong enough, but it's certainly a impressive debut with kids who, now that they're grown, are on the way to becoming great actors. It's very much worth watching. The question is, are you up for it?

(Rated NR. Although it is rather perversely categorized as a "father-son children & family movie" on Netflix, it is definitely not for kids.)