The 2000s have not been kind to filmmaker Atom Egoyan, once hailed as a visionary who could do no wrong (particularly at the Cannes Film Festivals of the mid-1990s). Egoyan's career took an unexpected downward turn once the millennium kicked it, and from there on it's been a slippery slope. Try as he might, he just can't seem to get film buffs to adore him again, and his last two films, "The Devil's Knot" and "The Captive," have had (mainly Western) critics sighing loudly and rolling their eyes — virtually, of course.

Perhaps Egoyan hasn't caught up with the times, or, more to the point, he refuses to do so. He's just not that interested in online stuff. In an interview with The Japan Times two years ago, he plaintively said that it's hard to get passionate about digital technology, whereas "snow is always interesting" to him. It's probably no coincidence that both his last two movies and his latest, "Remember," deal with memories and the passage of time following terrible tragedies before the world became smartphone-obsessed. And true to his remark about snow, he's always been a master at depicting snowy streets and desolate small-town scenes that mirror the moods of his characters.

"Remember" could almost be called the finale of a trilogy — in all three of Egoyan's works since 2013 he explores the memories of people who lost a family member (or members) to acts of violence. This may have you thinking that all those films are art-house material. On the contrary, Egoyan shows himself determined to be entertaining, despite the grimness of his stories.