Entertainment
Nicole Kidman's R-Rated Netflix Thriller Is 50 First Dates Meets Memento
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Have you ever watched Memento and thought to yourself, “I wish there was a crappier version of this film that makes no sense?” Well, your search is over, because 2014’s Before I Go to Sleep is streaming on Netflix. It’s billed as a psychological thriller, and technically it is, but it completely falls apart under scrutiny if you watch it for more than five seconds and have an IQ higher than the average goldfish.
It’s not the talent involved either. Before I Go to Sleep is adequately acted, and it looks fine. There are even some pretty neat flashback sequences. There’s nothing wrong with the cinematography, but the cast and crew alone can’t save a screenplay like this. You can’t act your way out of a premise so profoundly stupid that it requires four ibuprofen and a cool, dark room to recover from. The movie’s about amnesia, but unfortunately, I remember watching it, so I might as well talk about it.
Like Memento But Without The Drama, Mystery, Tension, Or Smart Hooks
Here’s the story that Before I Go to Sleep tries to tell. Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) has amnesia. Every day, her husband Ben (Colin Firth) gives her a 50 First Dates crash course on her identity, their relationship, her injury, and her memory loss. Meanwhile, another man named Mike Nasch (Mark Strong), who claims to be her psychologist, calls her daily to remind her that she’s keeping a record of her thoughts on a camera hidden in a shoebox in her closet. Every day, Christine wakes up, forgets what happened the day before, and repeats the cycle.
Christine has been living like this for 14 years. It’s only when the movie begins that all of this suddenly becomes a problem. She starts remembering her old friend Claire (Ann-Marie Duff), who gives her a crash course on what her life has been like since the accident. Through these increasingly preposterous encounters, Christine learns that she had a son with Ben. She also learns that Ben divorced her at some point, yet she’s still living with him. On top of that, Mike may not be entirely truthful, even though he’s the one who encouraged her to document everything in the first place. Smells like red herring to me.
Falls Apart During The First Act
What’s most perplexing about Before I Go to Sleep is how long Christine has been living like this without any meaningful intervention. She has no recollection of anything before her accident each time she wakes up. She should never be left alone to her own devices because she has a severe cognitive disability. The friends she reconnects with are way too casual about everything, as if hearing from someone out of the blue years after their traumatic brain injury is totally normal.
I understand that someone like Claire may have had repeated encounters with Christine and is playing along to avoid upsetting her, but that’s not what’s being implied here. Everything is far too convenient, with all signs pointing to the fact that somebody is up to something, which we learn through Christine’s flashbacks. The problem is that these flashbacks aren’t reliable, and they’re clearly being influenced by manipulative sources.
If you’re wondering who the manipulative source is, try the one living with her who has clearly been controlling the narrative from the opening scene onward. I’d say spoiler alert, but if you’ve seen even a couple psychological thrillers, you’ll know exactly how this ends before the opening credits finish rolling.
Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, and Mark Strong do about as well as they can with what they’re given. But if I’m being honest, you’re better off huffing paint, watching 50 First Dates and Memento on two separate screens, and trying to piece them together every time you regain consciousness. It’s basically the same experience.
As of this writing, Before I Go to Sleep is streaming on Netflix.
Entertainment
The best Dyson vacuums actually make vacuuming fun: See my favorites for 2026
Read my full review of the Dyson PencilVac.
The Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones takes the small space vacuum to a whole new level. It’s unbelievably slim and lightweight, and seamlessly scoots into tight crevices near furniture that don’t get dusted often enough. If there are certain spots in your home that you avoid cleaning just because it’s too tight of a squeeze, the PencilVac is about to change your life.
“Fluffy” references the ultra-soft material cushioning the four brush rolls, which provide a gloriously glide on hardwood you don’t want to scratch. The PencilVac’s short battery life and limited suction power wouldn’t be ideal in homes with more than just a few rooms or lots of carpeting.
No stick vacuum takes “stick” as literally as the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones. It doesn’t have a main body with a battery pack, handle, or dustbin like any other traditional cordless vacuum. It’s just a wand and a funky cleaning head with four microfiber cones as brush rolls — the coolest little vacuum that’s truly grab and go.
The whole vacuum can fit just about anywhere, and tight squeezes are even more accessible with a cleaning head that can spin a full 360 degrees. The agile design led me to so many awkward dusty spots that other cordless vacuums can’t comfortably reach: the small chunks of floor between furniture and the wall, between island and bar stool legs, beside the toilet, or under the low-hanging credenza. The PencilVac had commendable hard floor performance in my apartment, offering near-perfect pickup of daily debris like cat hair and long human hair, kitchen crumbs, multiple types of cat litter, and dust.
Oh yeah, the Fluffycones cleaning head has two dust-detecting lasers. One laser projects out the front to point out the hair and tiny flecks lying ahead, and one laser projects out the back to illuminate anything that you just missed. It’s so satisfying that you’ll accidentally end up cleaning for much longer than you meant to, only to be cut off by the pitiful battery life.
With the precision nozzle wand attached, the PencilVac weighs in at just 2.9 pounds. This uniquely compact design makes cleaning cobwebs out of ceiling corners or dusting baseboards so much less of a pain. The wand’s diameter is just 1.5 inches the entire way down, which made it possible to vacuum behind my dresser without pulling it out a foot from the wall.
Entertainment
RAMageddon is making it harder to find the best Windows laptops. These 10 are actually worth it.
I highly recommend the Acer Swift X 14 for creatives who need a Windows laptop with a discrete GPU for running the most demanding sorts of apps. That includes photo and video editors, graphic designers, and animators.
Most professional creatives need a Windows laptop with a dedicated graphics card to handle their intensive workloads. I like the $2,000 Acer Swift X 14 with a top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU and RTX 5070 graphics because it’s super powerful, fairly priced, equipped with a glorious OLED screen, and long-lasting, relatively speaking. You can go with a gaming laptop instead, but most aren’t nearly as compact.
This 14-inch desktop replacement is just as fast as an M5 MacBook Pro when it comes to demanding multi-core scenarios (i.e., most creative tasks). In my testing, its RTX 5070 GPU was more than capable of running graphically taxing games like Cyberpunk 2077 at over 100fps at 1080p resolution without the help of any AI upscaling technology, so it’s very well-suited for the likes of Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. (And other AAA games, obviously.)
For what it’s worth, I also tried a $1,700 Acer Swift X 14 AI with an AMD processor and RTX 5060 graphics, and the Intel/RTX 5070 version performed much better. The AMD/RTX 5060 one had 17 percent worse multi-core performance, so it couldn’t compete with the MacBook Pro, and it could barely run Cyberpunk at its 60fps minimum without upscaling tech. It also had a much worse battery life of about 6.5 hours per charge. My go-to RTX 5070 model lasted just over 10 hours, which is fantastic for a laptop with a dedicated GPU.
Note that the Swift X 14 is not a Copilot+ PC, meaning it doesn’t have a super-powerful NPU for running on-device AI tasks. This isn’t a deal-breaker for creatives, but it is for serious machine learning engineers and software developers.
The Swift X 14 comes with plenty of creator-forward ports (like a microSD card slot) as well as a crisp, vivid 120Hz OLED touchscreen. It’s a real attention-getter on an otherwise plain laptop. You can’t draw on it with the included stylus, but you can do so on its haptic trackpad. It functions kind of like a built-in drawing pad.
Entertainment
I tested the top MacBook alternatives: See which Windows PCs actually beat Apple
The 2026 Dell XPS 14 is a stylish investment for aesthetic-forward power users — I’m thinking content creators who might also be occasional gamers. You’re probably wishing the 14-inch MacBook Pro was even sleeker and a little more portable, and you may be getting impatient waiting for Apple’s touchscreen OLED upgrade. You’re definitely open to carrying around dongles.
I tested two configurations of the handsome XPS 14. The one I recommend as the best MacBook Pro alternative is an upper mid-tier model with an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor and a dazzling tandem OLED touchscreen (an optional upgrade). It’s no battery life champ, but it keeps pace with the base Pro in multi-core workloads, and its integrated GPU is excellent for demanding creative software and casual gaming.
The XPS 14 is easily one of the most elegant laptops I’ve ever encountered. Dell trimmed down its all-aluminum design for 2026, making it a touch thinner and nearly half a pound lighter than a 14-inch Pro. It’s available in two MacBook-y finishes: graphite and shimmer (coming later this year). Its lattice keyboard takes some adjusting to if you’re used to regular island-style keyboards, but it translates to a modern, minimalist look. Its seamless glass haptic touchpad looks equally clean. Its speakers are above-average for a Windows laptop — they’re just a little more echoey than a MacBook’s.
The XPS 14’s 2.8K OLED display is a $150 upcharge that I can endorse. It’s not as bright or crisp as a MacBook Pro’s Liquid Retina XDR display, but it’s more vibrant and just as smooth. (The standard IPS version is much duller in comparison.) Keep in mind that OLED won’t be a thing on a Mac until late 2026 at the soonest.
The Core Ultra X7 chip is a close rival of Apple’s M5 chip when you work it hard. It doesn’t feel as snappy in single-core scenarios, but trails the current MacBook Pro by only four percent when used for multi-core tasks. (That’s nothing.) What’s more, the Core Ultra X7’s Intel Arc B390 iGPU is comparable to an entry-level discrete graphics card. It’s perfectly capable of running graphically taxing titles like Cyberpunk 2077 with the help of games’ AI upscaling tech.
The XPS 14’s stamina is lacking compared to the M5 MacBook Pro, though it really depends on what you’re using it for. It held out for 10 hours and 19 minutes in our video rundown test, which is a full workday at least, but not great. (Its Apple counterpart ran for over 21 hours in the same test.) That said, its 120Hz OLED display dips down to just 20Hz when you’re viewing static content, so it should last much longer when it’s not looping a video.
If you want an XPS 14 with MacBook-beating battery life in almost any scenario, look into the $1,999.99 base model with a Core Ultra 5 325 chip. It lasted 22 hours on the dot in our video rundown test, and its refresh rate can drop to a mere 1Hz for static content. Just know that you’ll sacrifice a good chunk of power: It offers 35 percent worse multi-core performance than the Core Ultra X7 version. Speed-wise, it’s most akin to an M2 MacBook Air from 2022. (The cheaper Dell 14S with the Core Ultra 7 355 chip performs slightly better and lasts even longer, FWIW.)
The best Dyson vacuums actually make vacuuming fun: See my favorites for 2026
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