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“The past can haunt a man” is the first superficially melancholic line that gets muttered in “Reminiscence,” a moody, snail-paced mix of neo-noir and sci-fi, overflowing with similarly indistinct wisdoms about time and nostalgia. It does aptly define the tone for “Westworld” co-creator Lisa Joy ’s narrative feature debut as a writer/director, however. Set sometime in the future along the Miami coast—now, devastated by climate change and partially sunken, with a modified version of life still persisting on its belt nocturnally since days are just too hot—“Reminiscence” aims for something existential within a well-recognized film-noir template. Sadly, the result is an unpersuasive, vaguely pessimistic dystopia at best, one that liberally pulls 101-level references from recognizable Hitchcock flicks and neo-noirs alike, only to drown their time-honored spirit in murky waters.

Indeed, you will spot cues from the likes of “ Chinatown ,” “ Blade Runner ,” “ Strange Days ” and even “ Minority Report ” throughout Joy’s genre entry that culminates in a deeply familiar aura. And while that simple-minded accessibility doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, “Reminiscence” does so little that's original or homage-y with its mélange. Joy’s film just feels so frustratingly generic and second-hand, featuring body doubles and a dizzying spiral staircase that serve no purpose other than telegraphing “ Vertigo ”-esque visual prompts to the viewer for no narrative or aesthetic reason.

Hugh Jackman ’s Nick Bannister happens to be the murmurer of the aforesaid line about the past’s haunting powers. He delivers it through a morose voiceover (one of the many grating overindulgences of “Reminiscence”), introducing his unconventional profession to the viewer in the film’s opening moments. Nick is a private eye who gets to investigate the depths of his clients’ memories—sometimes, to answer a simple question, but often times, to allow them to relive their favorite moments from the past. He and his fellow ex-military business partner Watts ( Thandiwe Newton , more emotionally affecting than her one-note part can handle) seem to have a good, platonic thing going in a world where the future offers no hope and past is the only avenue that comes with jolts of optimism buried within. While the duo give freebees to repeat customers often, they still manage to make a living with their memory machine—a cocoon bed and a wired headpiece that plays and projects any memory the client chooses from stashes of discs, as a 3D hologram. Romantic, empowering, peaceful ... there's something for everyone.

So when the resident femme fatale of “Reminiscence” arrives in the form of Rebecca Ferguson ’s sultry, markedly sad jazz singer Mae, clad in a spectacular, body-conscious crimson-red gown that could disarm any lethal human in its presence, you know she won’t be up to any good. With misty, Lauren Bacall-esque mannerisms, Mae insists to pop into the machine briefly past the facility’s closing time. She’s lost her keys, you see, and hopes that Watts and Bannister could just retrieve them through a quick peek into her mind. Forgive this attempt to seek real-world logic inside a fantasy, but this request seems to go against everything “Reminiscence” claims to establish about how human mind makes and stores memories. If Mae hasn’t paid attention to the moment when she lost them and can’t recall the whereabouts of her keys, how could a memory of it exist in her mind? And shouldn’t this suspicious request alarm Nick Bannister at once?

Let’s blame his distraction on that red gown (and various other stunning evening frocks Ferguson wears throughout “Reminiscence”). She finds her keys alright, and the two soon enough embark on a steamy romance, on the heels of a legitimately erotic sex scene Joy tastefully pulls off with artistic finesse. But Mae disappears into thin air months later, leaving Nick and Watts with nothing but a handful of clues and memories they can hold onto, in order to stay afloat in a sunken maze of bigwig criminals, corrupt cops, and barons who’ve mapped out their survival on the dry land.

Reuniting with several of her artisan collaborators from “Westworld,” Joy renders this hope-starved near-future world with a heavy use of neon lights and shadows, achieving a melancholic quality that is at times mesmerizing, with all its CGI-heavy glory. Still, you can’t help but feel that “Reminiscence” at times chokes on an excess of cheaply made atmosphere, especially through its bloated third act with various overcrowded storylines of side characters— Cliff Curtis ’ corrupt police officer Cyrus Boothe and Daniel Wu ’s drug lord Saint Joe among them. 

Perhaps the greatest crime of “Reminiscence” is how effortlessly it wastes the collective appeal of its A-list cast. In the aftermath, you will be hard-pressed to recall whether Bannister was played by a bona fide movie star or an unremarkable newcomer. Joy has a wealth of stylistic and thematic ideas to spare—let’s hope that she keeps taking risks and making feature-length movies—but this particular rumination on an assortment of genres unfortunately sinks under its own weight.

Now playing in theaters and available for 30 days on HBO Max.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Film credits.

Reminiscence (2021)

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content and some strong language.

116 minutes

Hugh Jackman as Nicolas 'Nick' Bannister

Rebecca Ferguson as Mae

Thandiwe Newton as Emily "Watts" Sanders

Daniel Wu as Saint Joe

Cliff Curtis as Cyrus Boothe

Angela Sarafyan as Elsa Carine

Brett Cullen as Walter Sylvan

Cinematographer

• Paul Cameron
• Mark Yoshikawa
• Ramin Djawadi

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Hugh jackman in ‘reminiscence’: film review.

The star plays a private investigator specializing in the retrieval of lost memories who becomes dangerously obsessed with an elusive client played by Rebecca Ferguson.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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If you’re lucky and your memory serves you well, the lovely Rodgers and Hart standard “Where or When,” sung by Rebecca Ferguson ’s mysterious chanteuse Mae in Reminiscence , will take you back to Ellen Burstyn at the piano in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore , feeling her way through the song as she looks to her past to reshape her uncertain future. You should pray that exquisite distraction lingers, transporting you to a movie with a compelling plot, three-dimensional characters and emotional stakes that pull you in. Or you could stick with the stultifying bore of writer-director Lisa Joy ’s first feature, a convoluted sci-fi noir mind-fuck from the Christopher Nolan school.

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Joy happens to be Nolan’s sister-in-law, which might explain a lot, although she does have her own credentials as a successful television writer — on Pushing Daisies , Burn Notice and, most notably, Westworld , which she co-created with her husband, Jonathan Nolan. All that would suggest more persuasive storytelling skills than this lethargic trudge through the murky waters of memory, which is drowning in ponderous platitudes and enigmatic non-sequiturs masquerading as dialogue. Its star cast notwithstanding, there’s good reason Warners is dumping the movie in the dog days of summer with minimal fanfare.

Reminiscence

Release date : Friday, Aug. 20 Cast : Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Cliff Curtis, Marina de Tavira, Daniel Wu, Mojean Aria, Brett Cullen, Natalie Martinez, Angela Sarafyan, Nico Parker Director-screenwriter : Lisa Joy

Hugh Jackman plays Nick Bannister, a private investigator who reconnects clients with lost memories through an immersion tank hooked up to computer gadgetry that produces hologram-like visual recordings. These are then archived in Nick’s vault on glass discs, because he’s an analog kind of guy.

“Time is no longer a one-way stream,” says Nick in a gurgle of voiceover that threatens never to end. “Memory is the boat that sails against its current. And I’m the oarsman.” There’s reams of this prosaic stuff: “The past is just a series of moments, each one perfect, complete, a bead on the necklace of time.” “Nothing is more addictive than the past.” “Memories are like perfume, better in small doses.” Narration is also better in small doses, but Joy is so intoxicated by it that she repeats the entire opening spiel in the concluding stretch.

Since business is slow, Nick also takes sideline employment extracting memory depositions for the office of the Miami DA (Natalie Martinez). But not just any old Miami. This one is in — you guessed it! — a Dystopian Future, in which rage against the wealthy ruling class is a bubbling cauldron. The border wars have given way to civil conflict as the waters have risen, with the barons claiming all the dry land and pushing the poor and disenfranchised further and further out onto the submerged coastline.

The most powerful of them is Walter Sylvan (Brett Cullen), a Trumpy slumlord with his fingers in all kinds of chicanery and corruption. He has a wife, Tamara (Marina de Tavira), with a foreign accent and a shaky hold on reality, plus a sniveling scion, Sebastian (Mojean Aria), who learned from Dad not to do his own dirty work. The depiction of this decadent dynasty has all the subtlety of an anal probe. Naturally there’s a melancholy mistress on the side, Elsa (Angela Sarafyan), and a young illegitimate son who becomes an inconvenient blight on Walter’s public profile.

Nick’s sole employee in his memory biz is Watts ( Thandiwe Newton ), a loyal ex-comrade from their days of drafted military service who has her own sorrows. She’s the most intriguing character in the movie, but, unfortunately, disappears for a hefty chunk of it. Though not before demonstrating her kick-ass sharpshooter and fight skills, stepping in to save Nick as he’s about to be drowned in a tank full of eels in a New Orleans bar by the henchmen of drug kingpin Saint Joe (Daniel Wu), the area’s chief supplier of a highly addictive opiate called baca. During the shootout, a stray bullet hits the jukebox, and, faster than you can say, “Chew baca,” “Tainted Love” comes on.

That’s because despite all the plot contortions to uncover the nefarious business of Walter Sylvan — much of it carried out by crooked cop Cyrus Boothe (Cliff Curtis), who’s also in Saint Joe’s pocket — Joy aims to beguile us with romance. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is cited more than once as jaded Nick finds himself hypnotized by Mae, a femme fatale who takes a dip in his memory tank ostensibly to recover a lost set of keys.

Mae disappears soon after, but she’s not forgotten. As Nick has already noted, “Memories have a voracious appetite; if you’re not careful they’ll consume you.” Which is what happens when the woman who planted herself in his subconscious with a song from his childhood turns up in someone else’s visualized deposition, hooked on baca.

While Mae clearly spells trouble, Nick is unable to resist following her trail, ignoring the concerned warnings of Watts. As an ugly conspiracy comes to light involving Sylvan, Boothe and Mae, Nick begins to understand that he’s fallen in love and been duped at the same time. Or is the truth behind the shady dame even more tangled than he could have imagined?

Duh, of course it is! In a movie this overloaded with plot, the revelations are like a leaky faucet, just like that purple voiceover. In fact, there’s so much going on, much of it behind the literal curtain of memory, that Joy leaves little room for the characters to establish themselves in the here and now. That applies especially to Mae, who remains a distant cipher even after all the laborious explanation of her elaborate game. Nor does that help the heat-free chemistry between Ferguson and Jackman, who appeared together previously in The Greatest Showman .

Outside of his glowering Wolverine, given such haunting life, especially in Logan , Jackman tends to register most effectively when there’s a strain of mischievous humor in his roles, most recently in Bad Education . His Nick Bannister is a dour presence, far less interesting when he’s rewriting the tragic ending of a Greek myth while swooning over Mae than when he’s swapping banter with Watts.

The most affecting scene actually springs not from the soggy central love story but from Nick and Watts’ reconciliation as he places his future in her hands. Newton (who worked with Joy on Westworld ) seems underused in what’s basically a sidekick role, but she deftly sketches in a history that makes you want to know more about the character.

There’s more deadening talk than action, the latter confined largely to Watts’ rescue of Nick from his brush with Saint Joe, and to Nick and Boothe in an extended fight/chase over rooftops that ends with the visual flourish of a grand piano sinking into the watery depths. But the violence has little impact because the story never acquires enough lucidity to pack much urgency.

Reminiscence has a sleek, moody look and a big brooding score by frequent Westworld composer Ramin Djawadi to propel the story in the absence of plot momentum. But as a bead on the necklace of time, it’s shoddy costume jewelry.

Full credits

Distributor: Warner Bros./HBO Max Production companies: Kilter Films, Michael De Luca, FilmNation Director-screenwriter: Lisa Joy Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Cliff Curtis, Marina de Tavira, Daniel Wu, Mojean Aria, Brett Cullen, Natalie Martinez, Angela Sarafyan, Nico Parker Producers: Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan, Michael De Luca, Aaron Ryder Executive producers: Athena Wickham, Elishia Holmes, D. Scott Lumpkin Director of photography: Paul Cameron Production designer: Howard Cummings Costume designer: Jennifer Starzyk Music: Ramin Djawadi Editor: Mark Yoshikawa Visual effects supervisor: Bruce Jones Casting: John Papsidera

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Hugh Jackman’s Sci-fi Noir Reminiscence Is Weirdly Boring

Reminiscence is set in a half-drowned Miami where rising ocean levels have flooded the streets, but, midway through, the movie wanders off to a similarly waterlogged New Orleans, which happens to be home to a Chinese American gangster named Saint Joe. In the near future of the film, the drug of choice is called baca, and Joe, who’s played by Daniel Wu, has built a mini-empire off the pills and acquired a few dirty cops on the way. He’s only a secondary baddie in Reminiscence , another obstacle for Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) to contend with on his journey to figuring out what’s become of his missing lover, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). And yet, in his brief appearance, Joe’s so much more vivid than Nick, who’s a noir hero rejiggered for a sci-fi setting, a sad-eyed veteran of a recent war whose elements are left vague.

Joe laces his speech with Mandarin — menacingly calling foes pengyou , and saying things like “the pleasure shi wo de ” — in a style so flagrantly inorganic it goes from being silly to reading as a challenge, a dare to outsiders to keep up. He didn’t serve, having instead been rounded up as part of an equally unexplained but familiar-sounding internment made even more nightmarish by the levees breaking. All these provocative details are tossed out in passing, as though the rote shootout that follows is more interesting. Reminiscence is the damnedest thing — a movie filled with promising concepts it doesn’t get around to exploring, because it’s dedicated to a romantic mystery that’s never very romantic or mysterious.

Some of those concepts are familiar — Reminiscence , the directorial debut of Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, is itself reminiscent of plenty of past movies. The technology that Nick specializes in, in which a subject relives memories that are simultaneously projected onto a screen or holographic strands, recalls Strange Days or The Final Cut , while the sci-fi noir stylings can bring to mind Dark City . A degree of familiarity is unavoidable — the way the rich live in their own luxurious enclosed community, inhabiting dry land that’s maintained by pumping water out into the poorer neighborhoods, is out of every other dystopian story (as well as our dystopian real life). It’s what done with these ideas that matters, and while the concept of coastal cities being turned into ad hoc versions of Venice by climate change isn’t new, either, Joy renders it so evocatively onscreen that it feels like a waste when the film doesn’t linger on it more as something lived-in. Her Miami remains neon-lit in the face of the flooding, buildings partway underwater but still inhabited where they can be, residents gliding through what used to be South Beach in dinghies and going nocturnal to avoid the daytime heat.

Nick and his war buddy turned colleague, Watts (Thandiwe Newton), are set up in a moody old bank building in a neighborhood where the streets are flooded but still walkable. Nick got into the business as an interrogator during the war, and the pair still work with the DA when called upon to pry information out of the recollections of suspects and witnesses. Mostly, though, their clients are just regular people wanting to relive better days. When Mae makes a dramatic entrance at closing time, she claims to only want help finding her keys, though Nick is instantly smitten. He sees that she’s a singer in a nightclub, and looks her up at work and becomes involved with her — though in a recurring rug pull, our first glimpse of their meeting is revealed by way of Nick using his own technology to figure out how the relationship fell apart, because after a few months together, Mae cleared out her apartment and vanished without a trace.

To base a mystery around a relationship assumes that viewers are going to develop at least some degree of investment in that relationship, but Reminiscence is unable to give a reason for Mae’s hold over Nick, or for Nick as a protagonist himself. Ferguson’s a compelling presence who continues to get shortchanged by roles, though this film at least has the excuse that Mae’s seen almost entirely through the hazy lens of Nick’s imperfect, idealized memory. Jackman, on the other hand, can’t figure out Nick, who’s supposed to be tortured and fixated but also undeniably good. When it comes to non-sci-fi touchstones, Reminiscence might try to evoke classics like Laura and Vertigo , but there’s no actual darkness to Nick, nothing unsettling about his obsession. He cites the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but rather than grandly tragic, the pieced-together arc of their relationship is just predictable.

The movie feels trapped by its own influences, by its dogged commitment to its overdetermined genre mash-up of a main story, despite all of the interesting elements that pass by on the periphery — like the details of day-to-day life in a semi-submerged city, or the targets of that internment, or the ramifications of the memory technology, which we see at the end is being used as a kind of senior home of the mind. Reminiscence is all the more frustrating for its squandered promise, and for the way it consigns all of its best material to the sides, as though that were the only way to include it. When your primary characters are so flat and lifeless, why stick with them at all, especially when you have other things to focus on?

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Summary Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a private investigator of the mind, navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). A simple matter of lost and found becomes a dan ... Read More

Directed By : Lisa Joy

Written By : Lisa Joy

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‘Reminiscence’: Who Wants a Trip Down Sci-Fi Memory Lane?

• By David Fear

His name is Nick Bannister ( Hugh Jackman ), the kind of handle that suggests someone destined to be a private dick from the moment the doc slapped his pink keister. He’s not a detective, though. Not really. Nick deals in memories. In the retro-dystopic Miami that he calls home — the city still scarred from the “Border Wars,” the downtown backalleys now beachfront property thanks to rising tides and climate change — there’s a booming business to be had from the past. Nick and Watts (Thandie Newton), his partner and overall gal Friday, put clients in a tank, turn a few dials, and voila. Someone can relive their favorite day, or hour, or moment, for a price. They’re called “reminiscences.” That’s his trade.

Occasionally, Nick will help the police out with a case — say, if a defendant has evidence of a crime lodged in his noggin. Mostly, he deals with your everyday rich folks, the kind who have a lot of dough to spend on fading high points and fugue states. The gumshoe thing isn’t really his racket. And yet: Down these mean, flooded streets this man must, er, splash and/or sail, who is not himself mean, neither tarnished nor afraid. A man, stubbly and world-weary, who drops voiceover nuggets like “She was an idea wrapped in a tight dress” and “The past doesn’t haunt us…we haunt the past.” He’s Sam Spade and Phil Marlowe and the Continental Op in all but name.

So of course a dame walks into his office, the one with the mile-long gams and a closet filled with endless gowns from the Jessica Rabbit eveningwear collection and a vibe that screams “Femme Fatale, incoming!” She goes by Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). A nightclub singer, specializing in torch songs and sultry glares. She claims that she wants to find her missing keys. It’s a ruse. Nick falls for her, hard. They’re in love. Suddenly, one day, Mae’s gone. Vanished. M.I.A. For months, Nick tries to track her down, despite everyone telling him she was no good, that he needs to let it go. Now he’s spending a lotta time in the memory machine, poring over their romance’s greatest hits. Then Nick and Watts are asked to dig through the recorded mind-file of a witness in a drug-related murder from a few years back, and guess who shows up in the cerebral flashback as a supporting player?

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By this point, you’ve likely figured out that Reminiscence is one of those movies that has one jaundiced eye on yesterday and the other on a worst-case-scenario tomorrow, a pulp throwback spackled with sci-fi touches to fill in the stylistic blanks. The pedigree is strong for this kind of mix here, given that writer-director Lisa Joy is one half of the braintrust behind HBO’s Westworld . (Speaking of the premium cable network, the film premieres on HBO Max and opens in theaters on August 20th, because, well, welcome to moviegoing circa 2021.) She’s dotted the cast with some of the show’s MVPs, notably Newton and Angela Sarafyan, a.k.a. the cracked android Clementine, as one of Nick’s regular customers who ends up being peripherally involved in the bigger picture. Corruption is always a factor in these stories, where a single pulled thread reveals an unraveling blanket of social rot. Behind every fortune is a crime, and Joy has fashioned a sort of reverse Chinatown : Where that Seventies classic revolved around water, this 21st century mash-up centers around the rare currency of dry land.

There’s a bigger mystery worth solving then the one swirling around the center of this future-shocked neonoir-by-numbers, which is: Why does it feel so D.O.A.? Yes, Jackman feels oddly miscast as the heartbroken white knight poking his nose into all sorts of dirty business, but you can’t place the blame squarely on his broad shoulders. Ferguson makes for a fine femme fatale, even if she eventually gives up trying to color outside the lines of this sketch of a mystery-woman character. The soft-boiled pulp dialogue (“You’ve got balls, Bocce-size!”) does no one any favors. Both the sunken South Beach setting and the concept of a service catering to yesteryear junkies go from intriguing twist to novelty with a depressing rapidity.

Although Reminiscence doesn’t try to hide any inherent metaphors — what are most movies these days, really, but nostalgia machines, designed for those stuck in the past? — it doesn’t do much with the material besides fashion something like a a dull-edged Blade Runner. All that’s left is irony: For a would-be brainteasing thriller so obsessed with memories, Reminiscence is almost painfully, instantly forgettable.

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Review: Hugh Jackman and the sci-fi noir ‘Reminiscence’ make the most of memory

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

In our current movie landscape, which churns with remakes, sequels and seemingly endless comic book characters, it’s notable (and laudable) when a new release takes a big, bold and, yes, original swing. Lisa Joy’s “Reminiscence” is one such big swing. One of the brains behind “Westworld,” Joy makes her feature directorial debut with her Black List -approved script for this dystopian detective story in which the private investigator gumshoes his way through memory to solve the mystery.

Like any good noir, it starts with a femme fatale. Dressed in a red ball gown, backlit by piercing sunlight, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) wanders into Nick Bannister’s ( Hugh Jackman ) place of business with a request. It’s classic noir stuff, down to the hardboiled, philosophical narration Nick provides. But the city they’re in is a waterlogged, post-apocalyptic Miami, humanity clinging to the vestiges of civilization that remain above the rising seas (it will come as no surprise that the wealthy live in an area called the Dry Lands).

Nick, a vet of the Border Wars, is in the nostalgia business. Using a tank called the Reminiscence developed for interrogation purposes, he facilitates trips down memory lane for those who have nothing to look forward to and choose instead to look back. It’s like hypnosis meets sensory deprivation, except Nick and his partner Watts ( Thandiwe Newton ) can watch the whole memory play out like a movie, absorbing everyone else’s nostalgia. If “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” undertook the question of erasing fond memories, “Reminiscence” wonders about the hazards of what it means to visit them again and again.

These nostalgia trips are an innovation of that other classic noir narrative device: the flashback made literal. When Nick falls head over heels for the mysterious Mae before she up and vanishes, he dives headfirst into his memory and the memories of others to find her. It’s an interesting take on the dead or disappeared wife trope, figures usually seen smiling silently as paragons of purity and virtue in the memories of men. Nick doesn’t like what he finds when he goes looking for Mae, turning up drugs, murder and unsavory associations with gangsters.

“Reminiscence” is a rumination on living in the past, filtered through the detective genre in a fresh and innovative way, making a mystery out of memory. It’s also a big, earnest romance that’s sometimes a bit too in love with the sound of its own voice, often bogged down by endless pontificating on the nature of storytelling. Watts offers a bit of sour sarcasm to temper some of the sentimentality, her cynicism cutting through the syrupy romance like acid whenever Nick’s been hitting the tank too hard.

The modern noir style and genre innovation are such a neat cinematic twist that it’s a bit of a letdown that the world doesn’t always feel fully fleshed out. One of the juiciest villains, St. Joe (Daniel Wu), has the best backstory, but his screen time is jettisoned for a cartoonishly sketched New Orleans cop played by Cliff Curtis, a fantastic actor saddled with a character that’s too two-dimensional to care about.

Like “Westworld,” “Reminiscence” is a daring and futuristic sci-fi story based in a familiar genre and driven by familiar human emotions: love, loss, betrayal, regret. The dystopian elements are also all too real, from climate change to class warfare to border wars to internment camps. Joy is merely relaying the writing on the wall, looking at our own history, diving into our own collective memories, to imagine our future. It’s a larger reminder that sometimes looking back is worth the effort.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Reminiscence’

Rated: PG-13, for strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content and some strong language Running time: 1:56 Playing: Starts Aug. 20 in general release; also on HBO Max

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Reminiscence Reviews

It is a true delight to see how Ferguson and Newton escape the limitations that usually accompany female archetypes in this genre. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 6, 2023

Reminiscence's official synopsis is gripping with an air of mystery around it. To the misfortune of the film itself, the film in its entirety is deeply impaired by its unexciting, deficient take...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Feb 23, 2023

Reminiscence is full of potential but fails to live up to it. It aims for the heights of hard boiled film noir classic but sadly the result is nearer soft boiled. For a film all about the power of memory, the end result is ironically entirely forgettable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2022

While Jackman and Ferguson are excellent here, Reminiscence is a watered-down sci-fi neo-noir that overstays its welcome by wallowing in a romance that loses steam fast.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 9, 2022

Despite its promise, “Reminiscence” is more of a sampler platter of numerous better films.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Its really telling when offhand details about the societal collapse and war that led to this water-damaged future are far more fascinating than the actual plot, but it leads to Reminiscence feeling like a bad episode of an otherwise solid TV show.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 28, 2022

The film is bland and boring with a plot that makes no sense and emotion that fails to hit.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 15, 2022

The reality is that watching Reminiscence is an endurance test. It's two hours of Jackman's character, the sour-faced Nick Bannister, scowling through scenes and unloading exposition in his omnipresent voiceover.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Reminiscence is full of desperate people saying maudlin things, packing in as much exposition as mechanically as they can.

Full Review | Feb 3, 2022

The war and the vast gorge between the haves and have-nots exists merely as a blurry backdrop for Nick's vague, navel-gazey crapola about the nature of loss and memory and the melancholy passage of time.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2022

Where the film and director Joy get a little tangled up is when an attempt is made to stuff too much into the story all at once.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 28, 2021

A swampy mystery, a soggy action film, and a waterlogged love story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 13, 2021

The acting talent can carry this movie only so far but eventually, the disjointed and clichéd script falls apart so much that nothing can save it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 11, 2021

There're layers upon layers in Reminiscence which imply incredible thought and planning on Joy's part, most of which come together in a solid and satisfying way.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5.5 | Nov 9, 2021

Although it has an undeniable appeal in conceptual terms, it's burden by a dull and nonrhythmic narrative, and by a string of -very- common and pompous places.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2021

The right beginning and end are present, the journey is just too convoluted and overstuffed to gracefully connect them.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 26, 2021

Many films we now consider "classics" were initially met with disdain, indifference and befuddlement and Reminiscence fits that mold. This is a title which begs to be viewed not twice, but multiple times and I can't wait to watch it repeatedly.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2021

Despite its technical feats, this noir thriller is so bleak and dense you don't want to keep it in your memories. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 10, 2021

The detours can be frustrating, but the branches are often interesting to venture across, as is the experience of watching a major motion picture willing to reach as far down a rabbit hole as "Reminiscence" does.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Sep 27, 2021

Reminiscence features several people submerged in a water tank as they recover or relive their memories. Ironically, this ill-conceived movie is utterly forgettable, as it submerges viewers in a story that's both convoluted and predictable.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2021

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‘Reminiscence’ Review: Hugh Jackman Plays Detective in This Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

Warner Bros. Pictures’ Reminiscence is a detective story with a sci-fi twist, a dystopian tale in which time isn’t a one-way stream and it’s possible to relive the best moments of your life via special technology. With the idea of accessing the past as the jumping off point, writer/director Lisa Joy weaves a complex story full of startling twists.

Reminiscence takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which oceans have overtaken cities and temperatures have soared to a point where human inhabitants have been forced to become nocturnal. The rising sea levels have made much of Miami uninhabitable, and only one-percenters can afford living in the Dry Lands – areas surrounded by dams that keep the water at bay.

Nick Bannister ( Hugh Jackman ) lives and works in the flooded area, operating a business that allows clients to step into a tank, strap on electrodes, and slip away into memories of happier times. Along with his platonic partner Watts ( Thandiwe Newton ), Nick uses this technology originally created for interrogations to provide brief moments of respite from the suffering and hardship of life in a world gone mad.

The technology requires Nick to act as a guide to prompt each client into the right frame of mind to bring up a memory. Once retrieved, Nick and Watts are witnesses to these very private, personal memories that play out like movies on a special stage.

Nick’s world is spun off its axis when a stunning woman seeking the location of her lost keys requests a session in the tank. Mae ( Rebecca Ferguson ) is absolutely striking and Nick is instantly ensnared after only a brief exchange of words. He’s caught up watching her memories come alive and uses the return of earrings she left behind as an excuse to seek her out at The Cotton Club.

The two begin a passionate relationship and Nick falls head over heels for the sultry singer. Watts, on the other hand, recognizes a femme fatale when she sees one and when Mae suddenly disappears, she urges Nick to move on with his life. He can’t. Nick’s incapable of forgetting Mae and becomes obsessed with discovering why she left.

Nick’s search for answers leads him down a rabbit hole and into the world of drug dealers, crooked cops, and murder.

Lisa Joy’s noir, post-apocalyptic thriller offers a unique twist on a detective story with the use of recorded videos of key memories as investigative tools. Nick’s pursuit of Mae plunges the detective into a downward spiral and into repeated use of the tank to recall details from each of the days he spent with Mae before she mysteriously disappeared. The memories propel Nick forward in his investigation in a completely unexpected but logical way; writer/director Joy does not bend the rules she’s set forth in unraveling the twisted, non-linear story.

Lisa Joy’s auspicious directorial debut is a gorgeous production and is in many ways reminiscent of Westworld which she co-created with her husband, Jonathan Nolan. The production design, score, and visual effects are effective in establishing this water-logged world.

Much of the exposition delivered by Jackman’s Nick seems to be written as an homage to classic crime films of the ’40s and ’50s. It’s effective but a little overdone, and Jackman’s narration at times sounds eerily like Rod Serling’s introduction of The Twilight Zone episodes. It’s unclear if it was meant to remind of us Serling, but either way it’s jarring.

At its core, Reminiscence is a love story. Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson sizzle, and the film’s at its best when it focuses on their relationship.

Joy wisely sought out Westworld star Thandiwe Newton to play Watts, a badass with a heart of gold who keeps her true feelings hidden for much of the film. Newton and Jackman make the partnership between Watts and Nick feel as though they’ve been part of each other’s lives for decades. Joy also brought in Westworld ’s Angela Sarafyan in a pivotal role, and Sarafyan’s terrific in her limited time on screen.

Two twist-filled thrillers open on August 20, 2021, but only one tells a cohesive story worth investing time and money to watch. The Night House delivers a significant amount of chills and features one of the best performances of 2021 (delivered by Rebecca Hall ), but the complex series of twists laid out over the film’s first two acts are wasted by a dreadful third act. Lisa Joy’s Reminiscence actually connects the dots in a satisfying manner.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug material throughout, some strong language, and strong violence

Release Date: August 20, 2021 in theaters and HBO Max

Running Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Den of Geek

Reminiscence Review: Hugh Jackman’s New Sci-fi Movie from Westworld Creator

Hugh Jackman searches for his missing love in Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy’s feature directorial debut.

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Reminiscence opens on a striking image of a half-submerged Miami, with buildings rising out of the deepest part of the water like tombstones in a flooded graveyard, while the less inundated areas are filled with people splashing through knee-high water on foot or cruising blithely down streets in boats like they’re vacationing in Venice.

It’s a haunting visual metaphor for the movie’s thematic preoccupation with memory, and how human beings desperately cling to the memories that comfort them even as time works its slow, steady entropy on our lives and places. Both those recollections and those buildings will eventually vanish one day, leaving behind nothing but the waves.

Nick Bannister ( Hugh Jackman ) plies his trade in those memories. In this not-too-distant future, where climate change and a war of indeterminate origin have wrecked a large portion of the planet for most of us, a technology has been developed in which people’s memories can be accessed from their brains and recorded. Those memories can be used for things like criminal investigations, but most clients come to Bannister’s lab — housed in an abandoned bank — to relive precious moments from their lives.

Into Bannister’s place one day comes Mae ( Rebecca Ferguson ), a beautiful, enigmatic lounge singer whose picture would no doubt be in any dictionary next to the words “femme fatale.” She’s ostensibly there to retrace her memories of the past day and find out where she left her house keys, but it isn’t too long before Bannister is intoxicated by her and the two begin a torrid affair — which abruptly ends with Mae’s disappearance.

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Despite the disapproval of his faithful sole employee Emily “Watts” Sanders (Thandiwe Newton) — who is perhaps a little in love herself with her boss — Nick begins a dangerous journey to find Mae, probing both his own memories of their time together and a shadowy network of drug dealers, corrupt cops, and amoral oligarchs.

Reminiscence is the feature directorial debut of Lisa Joy , co-creator and executive producer of HBO’s Westworld (with her husband, Jonathan Nolan) and the upcoming video game adaptation Fallout . Like Westworld , not to mention a number of the films directed by her brother-in-law Christopher Nolan, Reminiscence combines several genres — in this case, dystopian science fiction with film noir — but never quite successfully meshes the two.

Reminiscence: How The Hugh Jackman Sci-Fi Explores the Danger of Nostalgia

Will Westworld Season 4 Be Set Far in the Future?

Joy certainly has a great eye for visuals: she and director of photography Paul Cameron (also from Westworld ), along with production designer Howard Cummings, have crafted an alternately beautiful, eerie, and harrowing vision of a very plausible near future in which the coastline is rapidly disappearing and pushing one’s way through water is an everyday aspect of life (the sinking cityscapes are reminiscent — no pun intended — of those in Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence , but are explored in more detail here).

Wealthy real estate barons (who live in a walled-off enclave, of course) seem to be mostly in charge, with the rest of the population getting by on a subsistence level, and the gradual accumulation of details about life — like the fact that no one goes out during the day because it’s too damn hot — paint a picture of a society that is clearly going through a slow-motion collapse.

All that interesting information, however, is not used particularly well by Joy’s original screenplay, which focuses primarily on the noirish quest by Jackman’s Bannister to find his lost love. The actor’s gravelly voice-over, which kicks off the film with a heap of aphorisms and exposition and reappears intermittently throughout, hints that Joy is still struggling with the clunky writing that has done a lot of damage to Westworld (and, strangely, seems to be a thing that the Nolan boys wrestle with as well).

So even though the film is always visually interesting, it moves rather slowly and at times comes across as inert, with the familiar beats of the story lacking any kind of real momentum. The shifts between “reality” and the characters’ accessed memories can be jarring and confusing as well, and the plot — which carries echoes of noir touchstones like Chinatown and Out of the Past — seems ultimately inconsequential, with a number of minor characters gaining importance so late in the game that the viewer doesn’t get a chance to connect or empathize with them (or even be clear on who they are).

The cast is uniformly fine, with Jackman doing his usual effective mix of vulnerability, determination, and raw anger, letting his natural charisma fill in the rest. Even though Ferguson is suitably sultry as the mysterious Mae, one never really feels the spark that’s supposed to crackle between them. Perhaps the best performance comes from the always excellent Newton, who brings a matter-of-fact practicality to the role of Watts while also imbuing her with genuine emotional depth.

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With such a good cast (which also includes a nice villainous turn from Cliff Curtis), great visuals, and the intriguing possibilities of the world she’s built, it’s a shame that Joy’s script never really adds up to much more than what Bannister calls in his voiceover “a series of moments.” Credit to Joy as well for ending the movie on a low-key note instead of with the usual fire and explosions, but for a movie about memory and its powerful hold on us, Reminiscence never finds a way to lodge itself in one’s mind.

Reminiscence opens in theaters and premieres on HBO Max this Friday (August 20).

2.5 out of 5

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

Reminiscence Review

25 Aug 2021

Reminiscence

As co-creator of the TV show Westworld , Lisa Joy is well-versed in crafting handsome, twisty, high-concept sci-fi. Reminiscence has a lot of the same qualities as that show, both good and bad. It has moments of creative brilliance, and just as many of frustratingly loose storytelling.

Like Westworld , Reminiscence has a beautifully considered setting. The story takes place at some point in the future, in Miami. Climate change has put the city largely underwater and sent the daytime temperatures rocketing so high that people live their lives at night. It’s a very clever idea for a film noir. Everyone lives in the shadows and the city is artfully crumbling. The stage is set for sin. In this world lives Nick ( Hugh Jackman ). Nick runs a service that allows people to relive happy memories, from times before the world was awful. His customers are sedated, lie in a techy bath and Nick whispers gently to them while he watches a visual of their memories on a big, fancy projector. If you can remember it, Nick can access it. Assisting him is a warmly cantankerous old friend, Watts ( Thandiwe Newton ).

The world feels like it has many stories wanting to be discovered. There is so much potential, yet it doesn’t come together.

One night, in walks Mae ( Rebecca Ferguson ), a lounge singer, all Jessica Rabbit dress and no backstory. Nick falls for her; she disappears; Nick determines to find out what happened to her, with only a few memories as clues. It’s a hoary old noir plot — the grizzled man’s hunt for the dame with secrets — and the addition of the memory gimmick isn’t quite enough to make it feel fresh. It needs more twists on the road to the solution, or for the memory idea to be mined further (it effectively becomes a shortcut interrogation technique). A mystery is made better with a few red herrings to throw us off. Joy gives us just the clues to the solution, so it becomes too easy to piece most of it together before she’s ready to reveal all.

It might have worked better if it took itself a little less seriously. A lot of the dialogue is severely overboiled, but it’s never clear if Joy knows. The film opens with the lines, “The past can haunt a man, that’s what they say. The past is a series of moments, each of them perfect. A bead on the necklace of time.” Now, you can get away with that if it’s presented with a hint of a wink, a suggestion that you’re having fun with the genre, but Joy plays it earnestly. In that context, it just sounds like tin-eared writing.

There’s plenty that’s good here. It’s exceptionally well cast. Few can play a heroic anger like Jackman, and Ferguson has such serious charisma that she gives Mae, more of a concept than a character, needed weight. The world feels like it has many stories wanting to be discovered. There is so much potential, yet it doesn’t come together. A little more attention on the plotting over the sci-fi bells and whistles and this could have been something to remember.

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• DVD & Streaming

Reminiscence

• Drama , Mystery/Suspense , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• August 20, 2021
• Hugh Jackman as Nick Bannister; Rebecca Ferguson as Mae; Thandiwe Newton as Emily "Watts" Sanders; Cliff Curtis as Cyrus Boothe; Daniel Wu as Saint Joe; Natalie Martinez as Avery Castillo

Home Release Date

• October 1, 2021

Distributor

• Warner Bros.

Movie Review

Nick was tired, ready for the day to end. His days hadn’t been all that fruitful and rewarding lately anyway, but today he was just shot.

Then she walked in.

Nick’s partner, Watts, called out that they were closed. But Nick couldn’t help buy hold up a hand and say, “We have time for one more.” This beautiful woman with her red hair and classy dress simply stopped him dead in his tracks.

She wanted to remember where she’d left her keys, she said. That may seem like an odd thing to ask someone for, but helping people remember is Nick’s specialty. In fact, taking people back to relive their memories is his job .

He first used the memory device, and his abilty to ease someone into their past, back in the service, while interrogating enemies. Then after the war ended and the great environmental disaster hit, Nick and Watts had teamed up to make a business of it. In their grimy, waterlogged world of Miami, where they’re constantly wading through knee-deep water and sleeping all day to escape the sweltering heat, helping people to relive past memories is a good business to be in.

After helping the woman in red, Mae, find her keys, though, things shifted for Nick. He started seeing her. He started falling in love with her. And suddenly, he wasn’t so much interested in looking back, as he was in looking forward . He’d been lonely, empty. She made him feel full.

But then she walked away.

For some unknown reason, Mae disappeared. After a few months of searching, Watts was telling Nick to let it go, let her go. He’d never really known “that woman” all that well anyway, Watts reminded him. But Nick couldn’t let anything go.

Nick was determined to find the woman he loved. He’d keep digging, he’d look in every dark corner, search every dark memory until he’d found a trace of her once again.

Nick is an expert at manipulating other people’s pasts, but he sure isn’t going to waste his time fretting over his own. Not when there is still a chance to make new memories with Mae.

Positive Elements

Nick’s a good man at heart. Not only does he take steps to find and help Mae and others, but when a foe is trapped and dying, Nick rescues him and almost dies in the process. Later, after making a vile choice for revenge, he returns and confesses his wrong, accepting whatever punishment the law demands.

Mae and Nick voice their love for one another. Mae gives her all to save and protect an innocent.

Spiritual Elements

Nick tells a story of someone going to hell to rescue a loved one.

Sexual Content

Mae is a nightclub singer. Accordingly, we see her in a variety of slinky dresses designed for their seductiveness. One, for instance, bares her shoulders and upper chest, another her whole back.

When she first comes in to have her memory searched, she disrobes completely (though we see only her bare back and shoulders, while Nick looks away from her public nudity) before getting into the memory tank (much like a water-filled isolation tank). At other times, other men and women climb into the tank, too, wearing skimpy bathing suits.

Eventually, Nick and Mae connect physically. Passionate kissing is seen, and his shirt is removed in a sensuous scene in which she also straddles him on a chair. The camera cuts away, and Nick awakens shirtless in her bed. The two caress one another later. She lies face down with a bare back on a picnic blanket. During one of Mae’s memories we see a sex toy on her bedroom floor. When visiting her nightclub for the first time, Nick mentions how lovely Mae’s voice is. “Four years I’ve worked here, and you’re the first man who’s mentioned my voice,” she smilingly replies.

In a memory, we also see that Mae had a relationship years before with a drug dealer named St. Joe. They kiss. St. Joe is generally always shirtless or wearing an open front shirt. We see the memories of several people recalling passed loved ones (including a male couple holding hands).

Violent Content

Nick doesn’t seek out violence, but it tends to find him in the midst of his investigations anyway. He’s manhandled repeatedly—while throwing punches and elbows—for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he barely keeps from being shot and killed once or twice.

Two large men attempt to drown Nick in a tank of live eels. He engages in a long chase and fight with a large opponent, they leap from buildings, smash windows, tumble down a staircase and lash at each other with fists and various weapons (such as a hammer, a lead pipe and a knife). One man gets his arm caught inside a piano and is dragged down by the piano into a huge flooded amphitheater.

Watts is said to be an excellent shot during the war, and she proves it in a gunfight with a room full of thugs and drug dealers. One guy goes flying across the room after being hit with a shotgun blast. Others run and get hit with pistol fire. Another man is shot in the back just before killing Nick. These battles are lightly bloody but not gory. The bloodiest kills are kept off screen. For instance, Nick shoves a needle into someone’s eye, but the camera cuts away before impact.

A woman jumps to her death. Another woman is stabbed in the stomach. A man is guided back to a memory of torment when he was covered in fuel and lit on fire. In the memory he thrashes and screams. And at the same time in the real world he’s given the equivalent of a memory overdose while hooked to the memory machine—he’s left to thrash around, mentally reliving his agony and torment over and over. Someone is executed (off screen).

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and four s-words join with a half-dozen uses of “a–” and a few uses of “h—,” “d–n” and “b–ch.”  Jesus and God’s names are misused five times (combining God with “d–n” on three of those). A crude comment is made about male genitals.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Nick and Watts use an injected sedative to help patients with the memory process. And Nick takes hypodermic needles full of the stuff with him on his investigations. We also witness Nick injecting himself with the drug repeatedly as he works to plum his own memory for clues about Mae and her whereabouts.

The drug trade in this world centers around an illicit substance called Bacca . And we see several people partake. One person is forced to swallow the drug. She then stuffs more of the drug in her mouth and takes her own life. One person is an obvious addict.

It’s also obvious that Watts is an alcoholic. She drinks from a flask and a bottle at different times and talks about trying to “dry out” at one point, unsuccessfully. Nick, Mae and others imbibe as well. We see people drinking in a bar.

A police detective and another woman smoke cigarettes.

Other Negative Elements

Old memories reveal some characters’ past misdeeds.

Just the idea of a film harkening back to the classic Warner Bros. detective movies of yore has its appeal. And you can see that first-time director Lisa Joy (of HBO Westworld fame) is trying to tap into something like that—mixing a sprinkle of Philip Marlowe in with some futuristic dystopian grit and sci-fi tech.

On paper then—with the likes of Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson playing the lead roles— Reminiscence must have looked so promising. On screen, though, not so much.

There are moments here that work, scenes when everything sparks just so. But most of this pic feels a bit too aimlessly rambling, impossibly coincidental and pointlessly thin. And that’s just the list of problems with the story.

Add in this movie’s grimy, futuristic version of Miami—what with its rough language, sexually charged relationships, drug use and lethal streets—and this is no cinematic vacation spot worth visiting … or reminiscing about.

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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Reminiscence, common sense media reviewers.

Dark, violent sci-fi noir has memorable performances.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Amid the double-crosses and violence, the film enc

Nick is determined, focused (some might say obsess

Cast includes a Black woman and an Asian man, as w

Fairly high body count; not much blood/gore. More

A couple kiss and make love (not graphic, but it's

Occasional strong language, including some slang t

Two characters live with substance abuse: One is a

Parents need to know that Reminiscence is an atmospheric film noir thriller set in a near future where climate change has left Miami underwater and sharply divided by wealth. Violence includes a couple of big shoot-outs and chases. People are also tortured and killed and die via both suicide and overdose; a…

Positive Messages

Amid the double-crosses and violence, the film encourages perseverance and empathy. People can change and overcome challenges to do the right thing.

Positive Role Models

Nick is determined, focused (some might say obsessed), willing to put himself in harm's way to find and save Mae. Watts is protective, brave. Mae could be considered a stereotypical femme fatale, but she's more nuanced than she initially seems. Villains are ruthless.

Diverse Representations

Cast includes a Black woman and an Asian man, as well as a couple of Latino supporting characters. One briefly shown character is a veteran who is a double amputee. Female characters have layers and agency, although they're also depicted as making sacrifices for male characters and, in some cases, as victims.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Fairly high body count; not much blood/gore. More than one shoot-out, a near-drowning, a form of torture that forces the recipient to relive their worst memory. A near execution. A character is stabbed. Guns are used to intimidate/threaten. A man's face is burned. A child is abducted.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple kiss and make love (not graphic, but it's clear they're having sex). A woman reminisces about being in bed with her lover (it's blurry; only her getting in bed to face him is shown). Mae disrobes; viewers can see her bare back.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional strong language, including some slang that's difficult to decipher. Words heard include "s--t," "ass," "goddammit," "whore," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Two characters live with substance abuse: One is a functioning alcoholic, the other admits she's an addict (the drug is an opioid-like pearl with a made-up name).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Reminiscence is an atmospheric film noir thriller set in a near future where climate change has left Miami underwater and sharply divided by wealth. Violence includes a couple of big shoot-outs and chases. People are also tortured and killed and die via both suicide and overdose; a child is abducted. There's occasional strong language ("s--t," "ass," "whore") and some sexual activity (flirting, kissing passionately, and making love). Substance use/abuse is a big part of the story: One character is known for alcohol dependence, and another is a recovering drug addict. Despite the story's darker elements, it also encourages empathy and perseverance. The film marks the directorial debut of writer-producer Lisa Joy ( Westworld ) and stars Hugh Jackman , Thandie Newton , and Rebecca Ferguson . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (5)

Based on 5 parent reviews

So much money for that!

What's the story.

REMINISCENCE is set in a near-future Miami where border wars and catastrophic climate change have left the city largely underwater, except for the rich "barons" who live on dry land behind a dam. Most people live nocturnally, since it's too hot to be out during the day. One of the few ways people entertain themselves is to use a technology that was initially employed by the military for interrogation. Reminiscence, run by war veteran Nick Bannister ( Hugh Jackman ), lets users relive a pre-selected memory as Nick guides them through their chosen moment. He and his colleague, Watts ( Thandie Newton ), help clients reunite with long-lost friends, family members, lovers, and even pets. When a gorgeous, mysterious nightclub singer named Mae ( Rebecca Ferguson ) comes in to jog her memory about where she left her keys, Nick is instantly captivated by her and begins a whirlwind romance. It feels like true love, so Nick is confused when Mae ghosts him and goes missing. Desperate to figure out what happened to her, he uses Reminiscence over and over again until his side gig doing interrogations for detectives and the district attorney's office turns up a memory of Mae in the mind of a known criminal. That begins Nick's journey into the seedy underworld to find Mae -- or at least answers about her.

Is It Any Good?

Writer-director Lisa Joy's directorial debut has much in common with her previous work in Westworld and shows her taste for dark, depressing universes populated by broken characters. Jackman is compelling as Nick, a man who spends most of his time guiding customers into their favorite moments, until Mae breaks down his walls with one torch song. Newton (fabulous in Westworld ) gives another nuanced performance here, even though her character isn't as well-rounded in this supporting role. Ferguson, who had a pivotal role opposite Jackman in The Greatest Showman , once again plays a character who can use her voice (and, in this case, Jessica Rabbit-meets-Kim Basinger femme fatale looks) to seduce any man she targets. The movie's action sequences lean heavily on orchestrated shoot-outs; one in particular makes memorable use of the song "Tainted Love" and is thrilling to watch.

Many have pointed out the similarities between the style of Reminiscence and that of Joy's filmmaker brother-in-law, Christopher Nolan (especially in Inception ), as well as parallels to movies like Blade Runner , noir classics, etc. But all movies can be reduced to elevator-pitch equations, and some of those criticisms border on being sexist. Joy's world-building is intriguing; she just leaves a lot of fundamental questions about what happened to that world unanswered, chief among them what exactly the "border wars" were about and how they affected everyone, beyond the tattoos that all of the war's veterans seem to have. In some ways, the first two-thirds of the movie would have made for a thought-provoking TV series like Westworld - - but as a self-contained film it's a bit scattered. Joy knows how to build mesmerizing dark places filled with broken people looking for hope, love, and redemption; now she just needs to refine and polish that vision.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Reminiscence . How intense is it? Is it necessary to the story? How does it relate to the movie's themes? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How is substance use/abuse depicted in the movie? What are the ways that people try to escape from harsh reality in the movie? Why is escape so appealing?

What role do sex and love play in the story? Is sex part of loving, respectful relationships? Parents, talk to your kids about your own values regarding sex.

If you could relive any memory, which would it be? Why is it such a meaningful memory to you?

Are you familiar with the genre term "film noir"? What are the characteristics of that type of film? Does this one qualify?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 20, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : November 9, 2021
• Cast : Rebecca Ferguson , Hugh Jackman , Thandiwe Newton
• Director : Lisa Joy
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Run time : 148 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content, and some strong language
• Last updated : May 31, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Reminiscence (2021)

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Reminiscence review: Hugh Jackman stumbles into a silly time-lord mystery

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

"The past can haunt a man. That's what they say," Hugh Jackman 's Nick Bannister intones more than once in Reminiscence . So too, alas, can a movie that makes no sense. Writer-director Lisa Joy ( Westworld ) seems to be aiming for an Inception -style metaphysical mind-bend, with the sci-fi jolt of Minority Report and a bleak splash of Waterworld . But her intentions get lost in some cloudy marine layer in between, sunk by hammy hard-boiled dialogue and a story that leaves logic at the door.

It's the near future, and things have not gone well environmentally; Miami is a lake now, a soggy wasteland engulfed by rising sea levels and governmental corruption. Jackman's Bannister at least has managed to carve out his own income stream: He's the sole proprietor of a machine that can lift memories from people's brains and project them onto a kind of private hologram stage. And for a fee, he and his assistant, Watts ( Thandiwe Newton ) — both veterans of an ugly but unspecified border war — allow customers to revisit happier times: bodies untouched by injury, tender moments with lovers who've passed on.

It's all quotidian stuff until the day a nightclub singer named Mae ( Mission: Impossible — Fallout 's Rebecca Ferguson ) walks in, asking for a session to retrieve her lost house keys. Never mind that she looks like the living embodiment of Jessica Rabbit, a purring femme fatale so slinky her red satin dress should come with its own googly eyes. She's soon slipping out of that gown anyways, straight into Nick's memory tank and then his heart. A whirlwind romance follows — the kind you know must be true love because it comes in montage form, with lots of sun-dappled hand-holding and splendor in the grass. And then the lady vanishes, leaving a devastated Nick to hunt her down using all the tricks he knows.

Mae, it turns out, is not who she said she was; there's a drug lord in New Orleans (Daniel Wu), a corrupt cop (Cliff Curtis), and a smorgasbord of other shady underworld figures who know her name too well. But Nick, who's supposed to be a decorated soldier, keeps charging into danger like a lovesick teenager to find her, only to be rescued again and again by either Watts or phenomenal luck. Worse, he can't stop philosophizing in the voiceover: It's as if Raymond Chandler got stuck in a Zen-koan generator. ("The past is just a series of moments. A bead on the necklace of time.")

Which feels like more of a shame because the premise is intriguing — who wouldn't want to relitigate their own memories, or at least find out what happens when you do? — the mood is Blade Runner cool, and the actors are working so hard to make the best of dim material. Ferguson tries valiantly to add melancholic layers to her pulp-fiction siren, and Newton embodies the relative voice of reason in most scenes; her default response to Nick is essentially, "Snap out of it." But by the time he's narrating the unraveling of the movie's central mystery exactly while it happens on screen , the whole thing tips overboard, sunk by the weight of its own silliness. Grade: C–

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Reminiscence review – Hugh Jackman’s Inception rip-off isn’t worth remembering

A thinly plotted noir that shamelessly cribs from the Christopher Nolan playbook has flashes of intrigue but crumbles under its own influences

L ast month’s much deserved swirl of bewildered horror and eye-rolling ridicule at the Frankensequel Space Jam: A New Legacy and its grotesque plundering of IP was also aimed at a worrying future. Things darkened even further with this month’s Free Guy, another film that doubled as “entertainment” and an exercise in brand extension. Both, following in the muddied footsteps of 2018’s Ready Player One, were littered with lapel-grabbingly obvious references to films also owned by the studio releasing each product, as if a click-to-rent button was ready to pop up each time another one lumbered onto the screen. The relatively recent siloing of Disney, Fox, Warners and Paramount and the almost total stratification of their wares available on uber-competitive in-house streaming services has led to an increased need to brand the studios as all-consuming one-stop crossover destinations. So yes, Bugs Bunny can and will bump into Rick Blaine whenever he damn wants.

Warner Bros has been the most bullish, using the entirety of its 2021 slate as a push to increase subscribers on HBO Max, where all of its many properties live. Now, this month’s sleek tech thriller Reminiscence does not exist in the same category as Space Jam: A New Legacy – not even in the same galaxy – but there is a similar “if you like this then also watch” vibe to it, impossible to ignore once you get a whiff. It’s written and directed by Lisa Joy, best known for her work on Westworld (available on HBO Max) and she recruits two of its stars to follow her, as well as the show’s co-creator, and her husband, Jonathan Nolan as producer, a man also known for collaborating with his brother Christopher (all films now available on HBO Max). The film exists very much within his serious sci-fi world, cribbing from Inception most notably and at times shamelessly, but also owing a huge debt to both the neon noir of Blade Runner (available on HBO Max) and the classic noir of the 40s, such as The Maltese Falcon (available on HBO Max), a genre that the studio practically owned during that decade.

It’s hard not to see it in algorithmic terms, for its personality is at times nothing more than an equation, one that pales next to the far superior films and shows it wants to sit next to, a drama about memory that’s far too easy to forget. In the near future, the world has become so rotten than most people are happy to live in the past, something that’s quite easy to do thanks to technology that allows for regular jaunts back to specific memories. Nick (Hugh Jackman) runs a service along with his longtime work partner, Watts (Thandiwe Newton), that gives people the opportunity to travel back, briefly, reliving happier, sunnier times. When Nick falls for the mysterious lounge singer Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), he finds himself savouring the present over the past but when she disappears, he uses this technology to figure out where she might be.

The reminders of Inception become so distracting that the film starts to border on pastiche. A device that allows for mind travel – check, an old song used for memory recall – check, the ghost of a beautiful but damaged woman haunting our hero – check, an oft-quoted line repeated by the hero about a journey – check, a tortured relationship between a rich man and his son – check. It’s overwhelming, even suffocating at times, which is a shame because there are elements here that work independently, without the need for the Nolan playbook to be so obsessively followed. For a while, Jackman’s grizzled noir schtick is fun enough (he’s an actor who can sell a lot ) and the big, expensive slickness of the film surrounding him is inventively designed (it pops on the big screen, where, sadly, few will end up watching it). The world of the film is often confusingly built (there are references to the war and the border with little clarity on what this all means) but it’s aesthetically powerful, a version of Miami that’s believably waterlogged with people choosing to live nocturnally as the days are too hot.

But the film’s big romance is less sizzle and more fizzle. The pair’s chemistry, shown over just a few scenes, is as wet as the Miami streets, and while Ferguson gives good femme fatale, she can’t quite convince as a down-on-her-luck lounge singer with a secret addiction – the actor is far too refined to nail that sort of grit. The dialogue is often stilted, going through the motions rather than gliding, and what Joy seems to think is a labyrinthine plot is actually rather disappointingly straightforward. The reveals are thunderingly obvious replays, often relying on characters’ great stupidity not to spot them first time around, and as Joy reveals that her box of tricks is actually kind of empty, we start to clock-watch rather than care about what’s in front of us.

There are, of course, many poignant things to say about how some of us choose to relive the past until it slowly breaks us in the present, how moving on can seem more impossible than continually going back, despite our awareness of the self-masochism of such nostalgia. But there’s nothing revelatory or even heart-grabbingly resonant here. File under: if you loved Inception then you’d just about tolerate Reminiscence.

Reminiscence is out in cinemas and on HBO Max in the US and in UK cinemas on 20 August

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Rebecca Ferguson & Hugh Jackman Are Tragic Lovers in This Sci-Fi Noir Movie

Ferguson and Jackman's performances make this underseen sci-fi noir love story well worth your time.

The Big Picture

• Reminiscence intertwines pasts to create a powerful sci-fi love story with a tragic bond between leads.
• Hugh Jackman delivers an emotionally nuanced performance, while Rebecca Ferguson adds modernity and depth to the "femme fatale" archetype.
• Reminiscence underwhelmed at the box office due to Warner Brothers' "Project Popcorn" release strategy, but could still find a cult classic status.

The noir genre has been booming in popularity since the 1940s, and it's easy to see why. Ever since Humphrey Bogart made his debut as the snarky detective Sam Spade in John Huston ’s classic crime thriller The Maltese Falcon , audiences have been enamored by hard-boiled mysteries that peek into the seedy underbelly of society. Often using cynicism and intricately-laden MacGuffins to comment on the era of their release, great noir films have evolved and intertwined with many other genres. The most famous may in fact be Ridley Scott ’s 1982 classic Blade Runner , which retrofitted the structure of a classic “sleuth story,” yet set it in a sprawling urban metroplex that mirrored what current society could look like in a few generations. While it was largely underseen during its initial release window, the science fiction mystery film Reminiscence is a futuristic noir that may be far from Blade Runner 's iconic status, but is still well worth your time.

Reminiscence

Nick Bannister, a private investigator of the mind, navigates the alluring world of the past when his life is changed by new client Mae. A simple case becomes an obsession after she disappears and he fights to learn the truth about her.

What Is 'Reminiscence' About?

Set within a not-so-distant future version of Los Angeles where the ramifications of climate change force a majority of citizens to work overnight, Reminiscence explores the criminal practice of simulating memories. Although the technology that allows customers to relive critical moments from their past is not largely accessible, the ex-soldiers Nick Bannister ( Hugh Jackman ) and Watts Sanders ( Thandiwe Newton ) operate a covert business that appeals to high-end clients. Although Nick has a strict policy of remaining emotionally distant from his potential clients, he can’t help but be intrigued by the enigmatic loner Mae ( Rebecca Ferguson ), who asks for his help in uncovering a mysterious key from her memories. Although it begins as a fairly standard cautionary tale of the future, Reminiscence intertwines its characters’ pasts to create a powerful science fiction love story . It's the tragic bond between the two leads that gives Reminiscence its strongest link to the neo-noir genre .

Reminiscence hails from writer/director Lisa Joy and co-producer Jonathan Nolan , best known for their work on the popular HBO adaptation of Westworld and their highly underrated hard science fiction mystery series The Peripheral . These projects serve as concrete proof that Joy and Nolan have a talent for world-building, as they can draw from aspects of society that are familiar, and imagine how easily they could morph into something more futuristic and potentially sinister. Avoiding abstraction altogether, Reminiscence is a grounded science fiction story that paints a realistic portrayal of how society might evolve . The notion of a seismic climate event changing the way that social infrastructure is laid out feels very close to reality; it’s also believable that the advent of technology that can access the past would be both highly popular and dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

How Dare Anyone Speak to Rebecca Ferguson That Way

Although the film spends a majority of its opening act setting up the sizzling romance between Nick and Mae, their prospects for a happy life together are soon thwarted upon the emergence of a criminal conspiracy. It’s revealed that Mae had a different life in New Orleans, and that both the corrupt cop Cyrus Boothe ( Cliff Curtis ) and the venomous gangster Saint Joe ( David Wu ) are keen to question her about the key’s appearance. What’s brilliant about the way that Joy and Nolan map out the story is that what the key unlocks is of little importance; as with any great noir film , the MacGuffin in Reminiscence is utilized only to put the characters in a place of vulnerability that tests their bonds . Once Nick realizes that Mae’s life is in danger as a result of her inadvertent involvement in this dangerous conspiracy, he’s forced to acclimate himself into the society that he’s long since abandoned.

Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson Have Great Chemistry in 'Reminiscence'

While Hugh Jackman has been closely associated with the X-Men franchise that has dominated his career since 2000, his role as Wolverine shouldn't overshadow his other excellent performances . Reminiscence allows Jackman to give one of his most emotionally nuanced performances to date , as Nick’s backstory is laden with tragedy. Although the use of the dream technology itself allows Joy and Nolan to identify the inciting moments in Nick’s past that caused him to be so cynical, his complete disenfranchisement with the notion of heroism is evident from Jackman’s performance alone. Although it’s hardly the first time that Jackman has played a jaded and violent character , he’s able to turn Nick into a tragic anti-hero who is impossible to not sympathize with.

Although the “femme fatale” archetype in noir films has been criticized as being reductive and outdated, Ferguson has real agency in her performance as Mae . It’s Mae’s decisions that are most critical in the story, as her decision to steal the key in the first place is what caused Joe and his goons to put a target on Nick’s back. The romantic chemistry between the two leads works extremely well, as it's understandable why these two loners would find something to relate to in each other. If hard sci-fi cinema is often accused of being too emotionally distant, Jackman and Ferguson add an element of modernity within their depiction of a doomed romance.

Why Was 'Reminiscence' So Underseen?

While the notion of a new sci-fi noir from the creative heads of Westworld seemed like a winning prospect for Warner Brothers, Reminiscence underwhelmed at the box office due to mitigating circumstances. Released in the summer of 2021 when COVID-19-related shutdowns had affected many key theater chains, Reminiscence was included in HBO Max’s “Project Popcorn” plan that sent potential blockbusters like Dune, The Suicide Squad, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Godzilla vs. Kong to a simultaneous day-and-date release on streaming and in theaters. Unsurprisingly, Reminiscence ’s strange release resulted in it being largely ignored.

While it's unfortunate that such a bold piece of original filmmaking was thwarted by an ineffective release strategy, great science fiction films can become cult classics after disappointing theatrical runs . Despite being considered box office bombs upon their initial debut, films like The Thing, Starship Troopers, Donnie Darko, and even the original Blade Runner are now considered classics. Who knows? Perhaps Reminiscence will find a similar legacy.

Reminiscence is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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Hugh Jackman’s ‘Reminiscence’ Would Be Better Left Forgotten

Director lisa joy's 'reminiscence' reminds us of other films but never gives us a reason to care about this new one..

Onstage, Hugh Jackman is electrifying. On the screen, he’s just another pretty face rendered mediocre in a maelstrom of Hollywood hokum. Whether he’s singing and dancing like a mind-blowing combination of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in sold-out one-man Broadway musicals or enchanting his fans as Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz , he has never been anything less than dazzling. In movies that criminally waste his unique talents, he’s never achieved the same status. The turgid, hopelessly misguided Reminiscence is a perfect example of what I mean. This movie is so bad that asking Hugh Jackman to raise it to a higher level is like asking Pavarotti to sing “Mairzy Doats.”

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He plays Nick Bannister, a “private investigator of the mind” (whatever that means) in an apocalyptic futuristic Miami whose clients seek memories of the past by allowing him to stab them in the  neck with hypodermic needles and then submerge them in a tank of water wearing a headset and jolted with electricity that sends them back in time while he spouts the most pretentious voice-over narration in years. “Memories,” he warns, “— even the good ones — have a voracious appetite. They can consume you.” His favorite philosophical catchphrase, which he repeats often in case you should forget it, is about how moments in memories “are beads in the necklace of time.” Ouch.

One night after closing, a pretty girl who can’t act ( Rebecca Ferguson ) persuades Nick and his alcoholic assistant (a wasted Thandie Newton) to dunk her in the tank. Her name is Mae, and she says she needs the procedure because she can’t find her car keys. (Huh?) In the scene she conjures, she wears a red dress cut up to the last point the censors will allow and sings “Where or When” by Rodgers and Hart. Nick becomes obsessed, but she vanishes before he can ask for a second chorus.

So he spends nearly two hours of runtime trying to get her back. He grows haggard and dissipated, haunted by memories of his own, and starts spending his time in the water tank himself. It is never clear what his work is, but it’s somehow of value to the D.A., who solves crimes by the clues that show up in the minds of Nick’s patients. Nick stalks Mae to New Orleans, which looks like an alien planet, and a multitude of characters emerge, not one of whom has any connection to each other or anything resembling a coherent plot.

This is not a New Orleans you could find on any map, but Nick finds Mae there anyway, surrounded by crooked cops, waterfront rats, drug dealers and assorted killers of every dimension. Much mayhem and murder ensues, and — you guessed it — Mae sings “Where Or When” all over again. It slogs on, piling on scenes and memories of every sci-fi epic and film noir from Blade Runner to Chinatown, but who cares? The corny script and the static direction are both by Lisa Joy from the TV show Westworld. This is her first feature film. It probably won’t be her last, but hope springs eternal.

Loyal Hugh Jackman fans should demonstrate patience in eager anticipation of his forthcoming Broadway musical revival of The Music Man. I can’t wait to see what he does as Prof. Harold Hill,  leading a parade down the aisle singing “76 Trombones.” Meanwhile, he should erase from his own memory anyone and everyone who advised him to appear in Reminiscence.

Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.

• SEE ALSO : ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review: Tag-Team Monster Wrestling

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For Girlhood Friends, the Tech Revolution Is a Dividing Line

In Lisa Ko’s adventurous novel “Memory Piece,” youthful exploration takes a dark turn for an artist, an activist and a web developer.

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By Alexandra Jacobs

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MEMORY PIECE, by Lisa Ko

Before doomscrolling, what did we do with all that spare time? Sometimes it’s difficult to recall. And some people will never know.

Lisa Ko’s socially astute and formally innovative second novel, “Memory Piece,” takes readers back to the dawn of the internet: when its hot glow was lurking just below the horizon and we thought we had the measure of its power, before it became the very light by which we see.

Her first novel, “ The Leavers ,” a finalist for the National Book Award, was about a Chinese American boy seemingly abandoned by his mother; his drift after being adopted by an overbearing white couple; and her thwarted bid for freedom. “Memory Piece,” by contrast, is giddy with women’s liberation, closely following three Asian American friends who meet as girls at a Fourth of July barbecue, come of age when the country was still meting out history in neat decade-long chunks — “even the nine in 1990s felt cold and steely,” a character correctly notes — and all make unconventional life choices. A marriage plot this is not.

The book is framed by Giselle Chin, an artist of the Marina Abramovic school who herself resists any framing. Giselle’s notable works include living secretly in a room at the Paramus Park shopping center in New Jersey for a year (“Mall Piece”) wandering around Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in white clothing for half a dozen menstrual cycles (“Blood Piece”); and, for the project that gives the book its title, handwriting memories for days and then burning the pages in public. She is devoted to her calling and pragmatic in her relationships, dating a past-his-prime artist from a rich family.

The second main character is Jackie Ong, who sneaks food, clothes and toiletries into the hiding place at the mall; regularly photographs its temporary inhabitant; and — testing the outer limits of bestie — carries away buckets of her excrement. (“Memory Piece” is notably frank about human waste, its quantity, quality and disposal, and matter-of-fact about sex.) Gay and cool, Jackie becomes the director of web technology at a company called Wonder, an early delivery service that resembles Kozmo.com , and then a whistle-blower revealing its shady business practices.

For a hobby, she has been quietly building a proto-social network composed of online diaries called Lene, after a favorite third-grade teacher named Arlene. (I flashed fondly on Echo, not the frighteningly surveilling Amazon device but the warm and janky bulletin board founded in 1990 by Stacy Horn, author of the trenchant memoirs “ Cyberville ” and “Waiting for My Cats to Die.”)

The third and least scrutable friend is Ellen Ng, who becomes Jackie’s sometime lover: a social activist who creates a commune, Sola Squat, in New York’s rapidly gentrifying East Village neighborhood. Foraging from dumpsters, attending demonstrations and using the Xerox machine at her office job to make zines, she’s idealistic and a little tedious.

Novelists of recent New York history have no obligation to cover 9/11 or the pandemic, of course, but that “Memory Piece” skips over both is, as the kids say, a choice.

After taking the trio through the dot-com bust, the novel drops them in a mysterious but wholly imaginable dystopian future, with facial-recognition checkpoints, fiery encampments, people holding guns along with their devices and an increasingly dominant corporate-technological entity called, of all things, Lacuna. (Its villainous millionaire founder also naturally wants to acquire Lene.)

Feature journalism, at least, has somehow endured, and though Giselle craves recognition, she also mocks the sycophantic white interviewer who comes to see her, and the very point of a profile article, thinking Jenny Holzer-like:

HOW DO YOU LIVE (HOW DARE YOU LIVE) WHAT DO YOU DO (WHAT SHOULD WE DO) HOW DO WE LIVE HOW DO WE DIE WHAT DO WE NEED TO HEAR

Some of Ko’s experiments, such as the insertion of “archival” photos from the 2030s — shades of last year’s “Biography of X” — puzzle more than illuminate. (Like, what’s up with the water towers?) A terrible, semi-apocalyptic event has certainly occurred, and there are military bases everywhere, but the details are hazy. We do know that an aged Ellen is now a delivery driver herself, wearing a diaper for efficiency and mainlining weed tincture for pain.

Gritty and refreshingly girl-centric, “Memory Piece” is finest as a novel of the analog, reminding, for example, how we once peered at “scrambled cable channels, the premium ones their parents used to subscribe to, and tried to decode body parts” — a time capsule of mixtapes, newspaper collages and Crystal Light.

It documents the last days of people being untrackable, able to disappear, and for this alone lingers in the imagination.

MEMORY PIECE | By Lisa Ko | Riverhead | 304 pp. | $28

Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer. She joined The Times in 2010. More about Alexandra Jacobs

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‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review: A Godzilla Spectacle Minus One Thing: A Reason to Exist

The clash-of-the-titans climax lifts off into the awesome zone, but until then the fifth entry in the MonsterVerse is overly busy boilerplate.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Watching “ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ,” I realized that the movie, a standard overly busy and mediocre blockbuster with a pretty awesome wow of a clash-of-the-titans climax, was demonstrating one of the essential principles of Hollywood movie culture today. Namely: All blockbuster movies are now connected!

In other words, Kong is facing a force who’s exactly like the villain in “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire”!

Then there’s Godzilla. He spends the film preparing for an apocalyptic showdown by traveling from one place to the next and absorbing radiation, first from a nuclear facility, then from an undersea battle with a flower-headed monster so radioactive it’s iridescent. By the time Godzilla is done with all this, his very being has been suffused with radioactive power, to the point that he literally turns pink .

In other words, he looks like he’s having his “Barbie” moment.

The film’s central character, Dr. Ilene Andrews ( Rebecca Hall ), while she’s busy charting all this, is most invested in the fate of Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the adoptive daughter she rescued after the Iwi people of Skull Island were destroyed. As it happens, the Hollow Earth is home to another tribe of Iwi (there’s a lot going on in that basement), who Jia can communicate with telepathically. And she turns out to be a kind of chosen one, since Jia will prove the key figure in activating Mothra (now reimagined in shimmery designer gold), Godzilla’s old nemesis-turned-ally, who will be instrumental in the outcome of the final clash…

The thing that connects “Godzilla x Kong” to last year’s run of superhero films — the ones that everybody complained about — is that, just like them, the movie can make your head hurt. But not because it’s too convoluted to follow. It’s because the real convolution is: Why are we supposed to care? About any of this?

The fact that we might not makes “Godzilla x Kong” feel like one of those “Jurassic Park” sequels where everyone is huffing and puffing about the fate of the world and “relevant” issues of genetic engineering — but we’re just there for the ride, which now feels like it has a study sheet attached. I guess this is the part of the review where I’m supposed to say that Brian Tyree Henry , as the wide-eyed tech-whistleblower-turned-conspiracy-blogger Bernie Hayes, and Dan Stevens , as the snarky British veterinarian Trapper, are a riot, but it felt to me like the two actors were mostly filling space. Rebecca Hall, in a no-nonsense haircut, uses her avid severity well, and Kaylee Hottle, as Jia, has a luminous presence, but I’m sorry, every time the film summons a human dimension it feels like boilerplate.  

You could say that the qualifier, the one that’s always there in a Godzilla movie, is that in the kaiju films of Japan the stories don’t matter either; they are often nonsense. But not always. The original “Godzilla,” in 1954, was schlock with a fairy-tale sci-fi gravity; that was true, as well, of the other two standouts of the early kaiju films, “Mothra” (1961) and “Destroy All Monsters” (1968). And it may turn out to be a stroke of karmic bad luck that “Godzilla x Kong” is coming out right on the heels of “Godzilla Minus One,” the movie that rocked the world of monster cinema. It had the lyrical majesty of those earlier films, as well as a story, rooted in Japan’s World War II trauma, that was actually linear and moving. It reminded you that these creatures could carry an emotional grandeur.

Kong unfreezes himself, and proves once again to be the fiercest primate around. And Godzilla outradiates his foes, even as he’s now so defined by that pink glow that it’s almost as if he’s being set up as a new kind of allegorical monster: not a metaphor for the bomb, but a metaphor for…the return of responsible nuclear energy? Stay tuned for the next eye-popping and meaningless sequel.                

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room, March 27, 2024. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Legendary Pictures production. Producers: Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod, Thomas Tull, Brian Rogers. Executive producers: Yoshimitsu Banno, Kenji Okuhira, Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Adam Wingard, Jen Conroy, Jay Ashenfelter.
• Crew: Director: Adam Wingard. Screenplay: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater. Camera: Ben Seresin. Editor: Josh Schaeffer. Music: Tom Holkenborg, Antonio Di Iorio.
• With: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House, Ron Smyck, Chantelle Jamieson, Greg Hatton.

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