Let me drop some fancy film terms for you: fabula and syuzhet.
Although the words sound confusing, when you break them up you get some simple definitions. Fabula is known as the story, from beginning to end. It's explicit; it leaves nothing out. So, recently I watched Christopher Nolan's film, Memento, and boy does that movie mess with your mind.
Major spoiler alert: I'm about to explain the fabula.
So this guy, Leonard has "this condition" where he pretty much has short term memory loss. One night he wakes up to find that his wife is being raped by some unknown man. When he rushes to his wife's rescue the masked man attacks him, and Leonard can't remember anything that happens to him after that point in his life. His wife survives the attack, with no after-effects (except some emotional scarring I assume). But she has trouble handling Leonard's condition. He doesn't recognize her as his wife, and she thinks that he's just faking it. She acts as though he's a liar, and tries many cruel tactics to try and wake him up from this "condition," however, none seem to work.  Eventually she tries the ultimate test. She tells Lenny over and over again that it's time for insulin shot, hoping that he will wake up and realize that he is killing her. When she realizes that the condition really is serious, and Lenoard's doing the best that he can, it's too late. She overdoses and lands herself in a coma that she never wakes up from. Lenny however, does not remember any of this. The only thing he remembers is that someone raped his wife. And now he has convinced himself that she is dead. Not knowing any better, he sets out to avenge the "death" of his wife. He writes down everything he learns as he goes, otherwise he has no way of knowing what is true, or even remembering who people are. So he knows that this guy's name is either John or James, and his last name starts with a G.This is important, so he gets it tattooed on his arm, that way it's a permanenet reminder. He get's a number of other things tattooed across his body. Things that he will remember everyt time he looks in a mirror, such as "John G. Raped and Murdered My Wife" and "Find Him And Kill Him."

And Lenny does just that. He finds and kills the man who raped and "killed" his wife: the man that took his life away. But he doesn't remember doing it. But he develops this system where he takes pictures of important accquaintences and places with a polaroid camera, and makes note of what he knows about them on the back, so that he can remind himself every day.
On his never-ending hunt to find the John or James G. that killed his wife--who he has already killed mind you--Lenny moves into a motel room at the Discount Inn. There he talks to a police officer about his quest for this "J.G." man, however he doesn't remember talking to him. The police officer, who's real name is John Gammel, tells Lenny that his name is Teddy. Teddy uses Lenny's condition against him, convincing him that big drug dealers in the area are te man who killed his wife. He get's Lenny to kill them off one by one, because of course Lenny doesn't know that he's already killed them.
One of the "J.G."'s that Lenny subconciously kills is the boyfriend of a drug-dealing bar tender, named Natalie. Of course he doesn't remember killing her boyfriend, and when she finds out that his condition is the real deal, she too uses him for her dirty work. Teddy warns Lenny that Natalie is no good. But all Lenny knows is what he writes down about each person, and he doesn't record everything. By the end of the movie, Natalie has proved that Teddy's real name is John Gammel--another John G.--and that the police officer that's trying to bust her for drugs is really the man that killed Lenny's wife. Not knowing any better Lenny writes himself a note, telling him to kill Teddy. Right before Lenny shoots Teddy, Teddy tries to reason with him "there are a million John G's out there, and you can't kill them all," although his feeble attempt to explain to Teddy that he's arleady killed the man who raped his wife goes awry, and Teddy is shot. Lenny is left to travel to another town and find another John G.

Okay, so that was confusing. However, that was only the fabula: the story.

The other term that I dropped was syuzhet. The syuzhet is the plot in a movie. It's the timeline of events that the director chooses to show. The movie Memento was based on a book called Memento Mori, written bty Christopher Nolan's brother. When Nolan turned it into a movie he could pick and choose the aspects of the book that he wanted to incorporate in the film. The thing that makes this movie the most memorable is that it is told completely backwards. The first thing you see is Lenny shoot this Teddy guy, and it moves backward to Natalie handing him the information saying that Teddy is liar and hasn't even given him the right name. Automatically you're set up to believe that Teddy is the antagonist, and actually killed his wife. It's not until the end that you realize that Lenny has been killing people since his wife went into a coma, determined to avenge this death, that didn't even happen. And although Teddy was using him for his own dirty work, he was really trying to help Lenny understand his conidtion. Also, throughout the movie they tell the story of some man named Sammy Jankis who mysteriously has the same condition Lenny has, and ends up putting his wife in a coma with her insulin shots. It's not until the end that you realize that Sammy really is Lenny's story.

Watching the syuzhet, without knowing the fabula is sometimes frustrating, however it's a brilliant directing technique that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats the entire time.