CREDITS MEMENTO, 2000 dir: Christopher Nolan Guy Pearce Carrie-Anne Moss Joe Pantoliano

“So where are you? You’re in some motel room. You just wake up and you’re in a motel room. There’s the key. It feels like maybe it's just the first time you've been there, but perhaps you've been there for a week, three months. It's kind of hard to say.”

Like Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, Christopher Nolan’s ingeniously-plotted, reverse-timescale mystery, requires multiple viewings.

The film was shot almost entirely in LA's San Fernando Valley, where most of the major film studios can be found – and hence a popular area for location filming.

There's no ‘Discount Inn’. The motel in which amnesiac Leonard Shelby Guy Pearce) holes up, is the Travel Inn, 7254 Foothill Boulevard, Tujunga (tel: 818..352.5951) at Hillhaven Avenue. The motel is not far from the animal sanctuary location for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Tujunga, incidentally, is where you'll find Elliot's house from E.T.

As Leonard drives to meet Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) he passes 510 North Victory Boulevard, directly opposite the Burger King behind which Doc Emmett lived in Back to the Future).

“ OK. So what am I doing? Iím chasing this guy. No. Heís chasing me...”: Leonard plays cat-and-mouse, or mouse-and-cat, with Dodd around the motor homes of Monte Vista Mobile Estates, 8100 Foothill Boulevard, Sunland. Directly across the boulevard, Hatti-Kay Coiffures, in the Edward I Zwern Building, 8119 Foothill Boulevard at Mather, became ‘Emma’s Tattoo’, where “Fact No. 6: car license SG13 7IU” is inked onto Leonard’s body.

Memento location: 'Ferdy's Bar': The Blue Room, Burbank

Natalie puts Leonard’s short-term memory loss to the test by serving up disgustingly contaminated beer. ‘Ferdy’s Bar’ is the Blue Room, 916 South San Fernando Road at Alameda Avenue, Burbank (tel: 323.849.2779), which can also be seen in Touch and Change of Heart. Behind the corrugated front is a stylish neighbourhood bar, good for after-work drinks and with a rep for attracting studio execs. It's also the bar at which Nate (Jon Voight) is drinking when he gets a call from McCauley (Robert de Niro) to get Van Zant’s address in Michael Mann's Heat.