Following

The no-budget black and white film that Christopher Nolan made before Memento. The premise surely had a cleverer, more satisfying plot in it: a dole-bound scruff called Bill follows strangers to pass the time and to build material for a novel he one day plans to write. One of his subjects, Cobb, turns the tables on Bill, introducing himself as a public-school burglar who breaks and enters for the sheer pleasure of the violation, for the opportunity to experience the stuff of peoples lives. "Everyone has a box", he tells Bill, undoubtedly the film's most memorable line. Soon Bill is tagging along with Cobb and rummaging through other people's boxes.

Faced with the chronological fragmentation of 21 Grams, Ebert asked "Is this approach better than telling the same story from beginning to end?", and there's also something rather pointless about the flash-forwards with which Nolan interupts the flow of the first half of Following. That and a smothering noirish style combine to make this the sort of film that seems determined to give viewers a bit of a headache. Nolan was to do much better with the reverse chronology of Leonard Shelby's quest.