Although the ideas presented in We Can Remember It For You Wholesale certainly weren't new ones--Eternal Sunshine and yes, Vanilla Sky came to my mind also--the story somehow prompted me to think about memory differently. Every so often I get this feeling of remembering an image I'm experiencing having happened earlier; I guess it's like deja vu but I don't think about it the same way because I distinctly remember it. It's like this image appears to me in a dream, just a flash like a photograph of one situation.
The most recent one was when I was taking my language & comp final: I was sitting in St. Joe's at one of those tiny desks writing an essay comparing two descriptions of Hiroshima. As I was writing a sentence I realized that I'd dreamed exactly that image a month or so ago, but at the time had dismissed it because I couldn't understand why I would be writing about bombs. The images are usually of situations that two months prior to the actual event, I can't imagine ever being in. This has happened many, many times and it always freaks me out because it makes me feel like my life is predetermined and I'm seeing things that will happen to me in the future. Does this happen to anyone else? And I'm sure that it's not me conjuring up memories, because it's that deep-seated memory feeling...it's all too strange to worry about, I guess. Excuse the rather personal reflection, but the more general things have been said.

p.s. Another great movie about this sort of thing was Memento, in case anyone hasn't seen it.