Rememory (2017)

(On Cable TV, December 2018) There’s a very pleasant trend going on right now of smaller intimate science-fiction movies truly digging into the potential of the form in presenting character-driven stories. Rememory is certainly in that vein, with a grief-stricken man taking on an investigation in the mysterious death of an inventor. The invention, of course, is the film’s science-fictional device: a machine to record and play back memories. You don’t need much more to develop a story about guilt and mourning, digging into the possibilities of the device in literalizing metaphors and putting the characters through an emotional wringer. Peter Dinklage stars as the amateur sleuth, delivering an impressive performance even in occasionally substandard material. Unfortunately, the film itself doesn’t come close to achieving its thematic goals nor of meeting the level of Dinklage’s performance. Rememory is too dour and melodramatic to be completely successful—it eventually grates and annoys with its tepid pacing and overdrawn conclusion. But even with those flaws, there’s something interesting in this antidote to bigger-budget, lower-ideas blockbusters.