Twenty-five years ago, Memento arrived and immediately redefined what a psychological thriller could be.
Directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, the film took audiences inside the fragmented mind of a man who could no longer form new memories. What followed was a puzzle told in reverse, where facts blurred, trust was an illusion, and the only certainty was that nothing was certain.
A quarter of a century later, the film remains one of the most discussed, dissected, and debated movies of its time. Its influence can be seen across modern cinema, from Nolan’s later works like Inception and Tenet to television shows that embrace nonlinear storytelling and unreliable narrators.
Yet despite all the analysis, Memento still leaves audiences questioning what they’ve just watched.
The brilliance of the film isn’t just its structure, though that alone would be enough to make it a classic. It’s in how deeply it understands human nature. Leonard Shelby isn’t just a man searching for his wife’s killer.
That’s the story he tells himself, the framework he builds to give his life meaning. But as the film unfolds—or rewinds—it becomes clear that what he’s really searching for is himself.
Leonard is chasing a perfect narrative, one with no contradictions, no holes, no gaps that force him to confront the truth.
But reality doesn’t work that way, and neither does memory. We all tell ourselves stories, revising and omitting details to make sense of our past. Leonard’s condition just makes the process more extreme, more visible. His obsession with certainty blinds him to the fact that his quest has no real end.
In the end, Memento is about the stories we construct to give life meaning, and what happens when those stories break down. It’s why the film still resonates after 25 years.
The details may be different, but Leonard’s struggle is universal. He’s not just looking for a man. Or even a killer.
He’s looking for a version of reality that fits—a version of himself that makes sense. And just like the audience, he never quite finds it.
And film won’t be the same for the search.
I haven’t seen the new Bill Burr stand-up act on Hulu. It may suck.
It may be another example of public castration before His Plumpness, just as the tech bros, billionaires writ large (where is the outrage at their brethren??), and, most ominously, lousy comedians like Joe Rogan have done before him. It’s all possible.
But for some reason, I doubt it. And—even if he did sell his ginger soul—it may be worth watching regardless. Because Burr has been beheading Plumpy’s henchmen left and right, starting with Nazi wannabe Elon Musk.
Burr’s distaste for Musk has been anything but subtle. In recent interviews, he’s outright dismissed Musk as a “fraud,” a “billionaire baby” who “never built a damn thing with his own hands,” and an “internet comment section with too much money.” His disdain reached a peak when he called out Musk’s increasingly bizarre public behavior, including his flirtations with far-right rhetoric, his hosting of conspiracy theorists, and his open embrace of authoritarian tendencies.
And now, he’s brought that same energy to his latest stand-up special, Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years, which just premiered on Hulu. Filmed in front of a packed audience, the special sees Burr tackling everything from modern masculinity to the absurdity of wealth, all with his signature bite. Early reviews have been largely positive, with critics praising his ability to walk the line between blunt honesty and sharp satire.
But Burr’s knives haven’t just been sharpened for Musk. He’s taken broad swings at billionaires as a class, openly mocking the absurdity of their wealth. On his podcast, he recently went off on the idea that billionaires need to be “protected” from criticism, saying, “These guys are sitting on dragon hoards of money while the rest of us are just trying to keep the heat on. And we’re supposed to feel bad for them?”
His stance on Trump has been just as brutal. While plenty of comedians lazily rehash the same Trump jokes, Burr has gone for the jugular, calling out not just Trump himself but the hollow masculinity that surrounds him. He’s ridiculed the idea that a man who “has the posture of a melting candle” could be the icon of tough-guy politics, and he’s repeatedly torched the “bootlickers” who prop him up.
And that’s exactly why Burr is worth watching—whether or not this special hits the mark.
It’s not enough to just have the late-night comics complaining about things. We need people who are recognized as real men, having real reason in this world. Comedians like Burr, who speak with a working-class bluntness, are far more dangerous to the billionaire class and their lackeys than any Saturday Night Live monologue ever could be.
Watching and supporting voices like his is a quiet way to join the resistance—not by shouting into the void, but by standing behind those who still have the guts to say what needs to be said.
