and constantly in flux, depending on fashion and context and timeframe and even the personal taste of whoever is going through the experience. It's the rare filmmaker who can make something that stands apart as a work of art but still involves and entertains us. Stanley Kubrick is the most obvious name to conjure up and Christopher Nolan has every possibility of succeeding such an important name.

Each film he's made thus far has tried to do something new, even though he's committed supposedly unpardonable cinematic sins like filming a remake or making a superhero movie. Insomnia is a rare American remake of a foreign film that wasn't universally panned on release and Nolan reinvented the superhero genre with Batman Begins, then apparently mastered it with its sequel, TheDark Knight, possibly the most popular and acclaimed such film ever made. I'm more of a fan of Following and The Prestige, very different films with very different budgets that both impressed me no end, and Memento, only the second of six features thus far to carry his name, seems to be holding its own. It sprung out of a cross country road trip, of all things, which prompted both a short story by Nolan's younger brother Jonathan and this screen adaptation of it, though the two apparently have a number of strong differences.

Guy Pearce plays the lead, which helps the story because he's far less recognisable than the initial choice of Brad Pitt. He's come a long way since Neighbours, an Aussie soap opera, finding himself in