Rememory - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Rememory

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
Rememory reminds me of those old 90s thrillers about memory and the scary men in black trying to hunt down those who possess certain memories. It feels like a blend of things like Total Recall meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with a little bit of Memento thrown in for good measure. Although none of those movies ever capture the tone and feel of Rememory, and isn’t useful as a DIRECT comparison, there are little pieces of all three movies flowing through the overly stuffed hour and 52 minute run time. A run time that is fraught with inconsistencies, melodramatic rewatching of old memories, and a convoluted storytelling process that is almost downright laughable at times. Even the steadfast and eager performance of the legendary Peter Dinklage can’t keep the film on course, and eventually just stalls out a full half hour before the credits roll, and coasts into home plate without ever really garnering any sense of completion or conclusion besides some syrupy platitudes.

The film opens up with a young Sam Bloom (Peter Dinklage) and his rock star brother Dash (Matt Ellis) driving home after a night at the bar, only to hit an oncoming car, resulting in Dash’s apparent death. The film suddenly flashes forward an indeterminate amount of time (no one can tell how much, the film never really delves into that little detail), with Sam poring over architectural models. Painting each and every one of them with a fierce focus. Something that comes into play later on in the movie. Next we see him attending a meeting of a professor Gordon Dunn (Martin Donovan), who has invented a “cortex” machine that allows him to extract human memories and play them back with picture perfect accuracy in an attempt to help people overcome their issues with the past. His machine is a rousing success, unfortunately he ends up dead the next day and no one can figure out why. There are bullet holes in the wall behind him, but Gordon “seems” to have died from an aneurysm.

Desperate to clear up some issues from his own past, Sam steals the Cortex machine and uses it to try and track back WHO killed Gordon Dunn, masking himself as an old associate of Gordon’s from back in the day. While everyone is hunting for the machine, Sam uses the captured memories on the storage discs to slowly piece together the last few days of the inventor’s life, coming closer and closer to the truth, but also slowly building up the courage to use the machine on himself and come to grips with the pain and suffering of his past life as well.

Rememory (a rather silly title if you ask me) has a hard time really finding it’s own footing. Probably the biggest sin that movie commits is the fact that it can’t seem to really grasp what type of movie it wants to be. One part of it is a futuristic thriller, with elements of paranoia and fear of technology, while other portions of the film seem to be a straight forward murder mystery with Sam tracking down Gordon’s thriller. Then there’s elements of a heart felt drama with Sam coming to grips with his past, and he and Gordon’s wife Carolyn (Julia Armond) bonding over the loss of their own loved ones. Instead of locking onto one, or even two, of those aspects, the film ends up flitting from one to the other at a rapid pace. A movie that essentially leaves the viewer constantly confused over what they are supposed to be feeling, and left piecing together the constant leaps of logic that the movie incorporates into the stretched narrative.

Peter Dinklage really does give it his all here, pushing the film into much better territory than it deserves thanks to his constant presence and sense of sheer will to keep it going forward. Julia Armond is excellent as the grieving widow, and there’s a few cameos (one being the late Anton Yelchin, in one of his last films released after his tragic death less than a year ago), and each one is usually well acted, but the script itself betrays the actors in ways you can’t imagine. The ending is so hyped, and the actors so intense in their performances, and then the film seems to lose all momentum, just coasting in the final 30 minutes and ending with an overly saccharine ending that offers up too many platitudes, and not enough actual closure to really be effective.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for bloody accident images, some violence, thematic material and brief strong language




Video:

I couldn’t find any information on the 2.40:1 encoded film besides the fact that it had a digital master, and seemed to be from a digital source. All the ear marks of a digital film are there. It’s got that slightly glossy vibe to it. Images are clean and clear of grain or other film related artifacts, and there’s that flat tinge to it that is very characteristic of a digital shoot. Everything that we see is graded lightly with a blue/green tinge, but the imagery is very clear, with stunning detail in most shots. The memories of the accident are razor sharp, with bright maroon blood on the windshield, coupled with the deep blacks of Sam’s “younger” hair, and the soft greens of the area they smash into. Blues and browns play a prominent feature in the film, with some shots being heavily dimmed with differing shades of both playing the main role. The memories on the little screen sometimes show a bit of a lower resolution to the image, but that’s entirely intentional, as you’re seeing what’s mean to be a “home” source rather than a razor sharp piece of the picture. Compression artifacts are kept mainly in check, although there is a few shots where banding occurs in some blatant manners (mainly when the camera is pulling an out of focus shot just as someone goes into the memory machine).





Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is a very stable and workable audio track that does everything asked of it extremely well. The film has bursts of activity that livens up the sound stage. Usually related to a memory where Sam is reliving the accident, or during a lecture hall moment where you can hear the background elements of the crowd surfacing. Otherwise, the track is content to be a fairly front heavy affair, with dialog taking the center stage for large portions of the run time. Vocals are crisp and clean, located in the center of the front sound stage and evenly balance with the mix. LFE is tight and shows some serious oomph in a few scenes, usually in regards to a memory or a deep pulsing down beat in the score. It’s not a track that really thrives on action and excitement, but it does everything required without any complaints.





Extras:

• Audio Commentary with Writer-Director Mark Palansky and Actor Peter Dinklage
• The Memories We Keep: Featurette

Final Score: ​

Rememory is one of those films that really isn’t a bad film, but it isn’t a good film either. The main sin is that its so forgettable and convoluted that most people aren’t going to remember much about the movie after turning the TV off. It has a great cast of people (huge Peter Dinklage fan), but the execution is so muddled and ridiculous that after a while you begin to stop caring about the outcome, and when the outcome happens, you just roll your eyes and turn the TV off in order to do something more productive. Technically speaking, the film looks and sounds great, and the commentary on the disc is actually pretty interesting, but at the end of the day…….Rememory is best left as a memory. A forgettable one at that.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Anton Yelchin, Matt Ellis
Directed by: Mark Palansky
Written by: Mark Palansky, Mike Vukadinovich
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 112 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: November 28th, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Forgettable Rental.

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will skip this one.