Tag: Memory and Identity

If memory makes identity, stories about broken memory are stories about broken selves. This tag collects reviews of films and fiction where memory and identity unravel together, and the questions they leave behind.

2010s

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

June 6, 2026

Not the thrill of immortality, not the hunt, not the gothic romance. What it offers instead is two ancient lovers, the crumbling cities they haunt, and the slow pleasure of their company.

1970s

Don’t Look Now (1973)

May 19, 2026

Nicolas Roeg's 1973 Venice grief drama. Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie.

2010s

Get Out (2017)

May 19, 2026

Jordan Peele's 2017 directorial debut. Daniel Kaluuya at his white girlfriend's parents' house.

2010s

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

May 19, 2026

The production received exceptional access to the otherwise sealed cave, with Herzog's small crew filming the paintings using lightweight equipment that conventional documentary could not deploy. Cave of Forgotten Dreams shows how documentary could function through treatment of material whose…

1940s

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

May 19, 2026

A magazine columnist who has fabricated her domestic Connecticut life must host a war hero and her publisher for Christmas. Christmas in Connecticut is Peter Godfrey's 1945 American romantic comedy about a magazine columnist whose readers believe she lives on…

1980s

A Christmas Story (1983)

May 19, 2026

Peter Billingsley plays Ralphie. The film operates as memory instead of plot.

1990s

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

May 19, 2026

An FBI trainee consults imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter to catch a serial killer skinning his victims. The Silence of the Lambs is Jonathan Demme's 1991 American psychological-thriller film adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel, depicting an FBI trainee who consults…

2010s

The Act of Killing (2012)

May 19, 2026

Aging death squad leaders reenact their killings as movie scenes. The Act of Killing is Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 Danish-British-Norwegian documentary depicting former Indonesian death squad leaders who participated in the 1965-66 anti-communist purges that killed approximately five hundred thousand to…

1940s

Out of the Past (1947)

May 19, 2026

Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. Out of the Past is Jacques Tourneur's 1947 American film noir adapting Daniel Mainwaring's novel Build My Gallows High under the author's Geoffrey Homes pseudonym.