TIME TRAVEL IN THE MOVIES

Saw TIME LAPSE which isn’t a time travel movie in the literal sense.  The plot is about a machine that takes photographs of events occurring 24 hours in the future.  It was an interesting film with a Twilight Zone episode premise that perhaps dragged out the story too long and reduced the impact of the twist ending.

This got me to thinking.  Time travel is an intriguing premise for a work of fiction both for reproductions of historical epochs pre-camera or pre-film and for the various conundrums and paradoxes raised by time travel.

Probably the best film I’ve seen of the latter is the 2007 Spanish film TIMECRIMES which is not only ingenuously twisty but a seat of your pants thriller.  The tale of a man who one day witnesses what he thinks is a crime and follows the aggressor into the woods only to discover a time travelling snafu that ultimately involves three different versions of himself.

To be totally honest with itself, a time travel movie has to throw logic out the window but still compensate the audience with a clever and interesting film.  I think TIMECRIMES does this better than any time travel film I’ve ever seen.  Things happen quickly and you try to follow the many wild changes in narrative while keeping track of what is actually going on and where we are in the story’s looped storyline. 

Other great time travel movies?  Well 1960’s THE TIME MACHINE with the recently deceased Rod Taylor is an awesome futuristic tale.  Its special effects have survived the test of time.  The remake sucked.  TIMECRIMES is also being remade as an American film.  I am sure it will suck also.  Go into the future and then go back into the past and show the sucky remake as proof it should not be made.