The Caveman's Valentine

Memento devotees, take note: Here’s another entrancingly fractured tale of a mentally defective would-be detective. Visually inventive director Kasi Lemmons (who stunned with 1997’s Cajun thriller Eve’s Bayou) reteams with Jackson, casting him as the hallucination-prone Romulus Ledbetter, a Juilliard-trained genius who wrestles his personal demons while attempting to solve the murder of a fellow homeless man. The plot ultimately becomes even more tangled than Romulus’ ratty dreadlocks, but Jackson’s bravura work is positively volcanic.