Time-Travel

The directorial debut of Shane Carruth, who also wrote the screenplay and produced, edited, scored as well as starred in the film, Primer is a pretty divisive film. Some will tell you this one of of the most brilliant time travel films ever made whilst others will have no idea what’s going on and tend to find the whole experience rather boring. But there is no denying that Primer caused a splash, is a unique piece of work and an utterly assured debut by Carruth.

Aaron (Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) have boring technology day jobs and spend their nights creating and selling error-checking systems from Aaron’s garage. When they pursue a new project, a device to reduce the weight of objects, Abe discovers an amazing side-effect: the device seems to alter time, allowing an object to be temporarily doubled.

Written and directed by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael, Mr. Nobody is a philosophical science fiction drama starring Jared Leto.

Nemo Nobody (Leto) is a 118 year old man and the last mortal on earth after as the rest of the population has obtained quasi-immortality. On his deathbed, he recounts his life, which has been far from ordinary, to a psychiatrist, who puts him under hypnosis, as well as to a journalist, who is curious about the life of the last mortal on earth.
It turns out that at the age of nine his parents divorced and Nemo was forced to chose between them, which meant staying with his dad in England or going with his mum to the United States. But Nemo refused to chose and thereby left open many possibilities, all of which he seems to have lived. He recounts his three major life paths, involving different partners and endless different details.

Mr. Nobody won the audience award for Best Film at the European Film Awards, six Magritte Awards in Belgium, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay and Cinematography and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a ten minute standing ovation. A must-see film for science fiction fans as well as all of those who like their films metaphysical.

Based on the short story All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, Predestination is an Australian science fiction film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, aka The Spierig Brothers. The two had already made two previous features together, but Predestination marks the point where they really start getting into their own and actually provide a fresh and original take on the time travel genre.

The whole point of the narrative is its intricate web of time travel conundrums. Suffice to say that the film deals with an organisation known as The Temporal Bureau which sends its “temporal agents” through time to prevent crimes before they occur.

Makoto Konno (Naka) is a teenage girl who lives with her parents and sister in Tokyo and hangs and plays baseball with her friends Chiaki and Kosuke. One day in school she finds an odd looking object and soon after discovers that she has gained the ability to rewind time. At first, she uses her new found power for frivolous things like not being late at school or saving herself from embarrassment when Chiaki professes his love for her but soon she comes to realise that altering time can have serious consequences.

“Come today…soar on wings of fancy to the magic days of tomorrow’s existence…see life, love in 1980—find out what your grandchildren are going to do!” [2]. A man who had been struck by lighting and died in 1930 is revived in 1980 New York City.

In this future, things have drastically changed: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, marriages are arranged by the government, procreation has been changed, pills have replaced food, and there’s a lot of singing. Minus the singing and Wesley Snipes, the basic premise sounds very similar to Demolition Man (1993). It is an unusual film that mixes the musical and sci-fi genres, along with a bunch of corny jokes that must have been relevant for the era.

What really stands out in this film is the set design and special effects, which paved the way for future sci-fi films. The massive art deco style New York city-scape was created by a team consisting of 205 technicians over a five-month period, and cost $168,000 to build

The first of two entries directed by Terry Gilliam found on this list, Time Bandits is one of the director’s earlier directorial efforts in which he still seems to be somewhat caught in his Monty-Python roots. Gilliam also produced and co-wrote the film (with Michael Palin, which might also explain the lingering Pythonesque humour in this feature) and the film features an all-star British cast including Sean Connery, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Ian Holm, Ralph Richardson and David Warner.

Kevin is an eleven-year-old boy living with his dreadfully dull and gadget-addicted parents in England. He seeks his escape in books and seems far more interested in history than anyone else in the household. Then one night, when he’s laying in bed, a knight on horseback storms out of his cupboard and disappears in the woods, which soon also disappear as a stunned Kevin finds himself in his bedroom again.

Inspired by one of the greatest short films ever made, La Jetée by Chris Marker, which is still coming up on this list, Twelve Monkeys is directed by Terry Gilliam and stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt. The film is part of Gilliam’s dystopian trilogy, which started with Brazil and was recently concluded with The Zero Theorem.

The central premise of Twelve Monkeys is time travel. In a future society a plague has wiped out most of the earth’s population and those who are still alive are forced to live in underground caves as the air outside is poisonous

The feature film directorial debut of Richard Kelly, who also wrote the screenplay, is an unsettling and melancholy mixture of teen movie, horror, science fiction and supernatural drama. The film was a mild success upon its initial release but quickly gained a large cult following, which in turn led to the release of a twenty minute longer director’s cut in 2004.

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a troubled teenager who is often visited by the most scary looking 6-foot bunny-like creature called Frank. As the movie begins, Donnie is woken up by Frank, led outside the house and told the world will come to an end in four weeks. Moments after this revelation an jet plane engine crashes through Donnie’s roof, demolishing his bedroom.

Inspired by a real-life Backwoods Home magazine classified ad, which was actually written as a joke by one of the magazine’s employees as pure filler, Safety Not Guaranteed is an indie comedy with romantic, sci-fi and dramatic undertones, directed by Colin Trevorrow and starring Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass.

After Seattle Magazine writer Jeff (Jake Johnson) comes across a classified ad which reads: “WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.”, he pitches the story to his boss and is sent off with two colleagues, Darius (Plaza) and Arnau (Karan Soni), to do a piece on the person behind the odd ad.

Yet another amazingly assured directorial feature film debut, Timecrimes is a low budget and criminally underseen Spanish time travelling thriller directed by Nacho Vigalondo, who also wrote the screenplay as well as appearing in the movie himself.

Timecrimes tells the story of a man who is spending the weekend in the country with his girlfriend. He spots a beautiful woman in a nearby house undressing and goes to examine things close-up. When he arrives he finds the woman lying in the grass and is attacked by a man with a bandaged face.

Written and directed by Richard Curtis, About Time is a surprisingly fresh romantic comedy-drama from the director who is known for his Hugh Grant vehicles, which is partly because its unusual plot device for the genre: time travel.

Tim Lake (Domhall Gleeson) is a lonely young man from Cornwell, who, on the day of his 21st birthday, is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that the men in their family somehow have the ability to travel back in time although they are only able to go back to previous experiences from their own lives. After having been warned not to use this ability to gain financial wealth, Tim figures that the gift might come in handy when trying to get a girlfriend.

Somewhere in the future, the world has turned on humanity and famine is widespread. As it’s obvious that the planet will no longer be able to sustain human life, various missions have been sent through a recently appeared wormhole near Saturn and although communication with those missions has been lost, enough data has been sent back to suggest their might be three planets on the other side which might be habitable.

As a result former NASA pilot Cooper (McConaughey) is recruited by professor Brand (Caine) to follow those earlier missions and confirm which planet might be most suitable, meaning he will have to leave his family son and daughter behind on earth and possibly never see them again in order to save them and all of mankind in the process.

The year is 2044 and time travel has not yet been invented. I was, however, be invented 30 years later but also immediately outlawed and appropriated by the mob who use it to send people they need to get rid off back in time to be killed by assassins known as Loopers.

“They Weren’t Born Yesterday!” A 12th century knight (Jean Reno) and his servant (Christian Clavier) attempt to travel backwards in time to change a series of unfortunate events, instead they are accidentally sent forward into the 20th century. The knight enlists the help of his ancestors in order to figure a way back, all while coping with the drastic changes in time and technology.

This is a hilarious French comedy that was co-written by Clavier, and is a classic fish out of water tale. While the general premise has been done before, it’s the situations and the way both main characters deal with them that makes this movie so funny. It was a huge success in France; it was the number one film there in 1993 and remains the fifth highest grossing film of all time