For the Love of Adam. Never have I cried so much at a time travel film, especially one loaded with this many Hollywood tropes. THE ADAM PROJECT is pretty straightforward in its first two acts, about a pilot from the future who lands in 2022 and enlists the aid of his 12-year-old self to time-travel further back in time to … Read More
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
Deus ex Marvela. The Elevator Pitch: “Think: BACK TO THE FUTURE meets STAR TREK IV – the Avengers travel back in time, to retrieve these McGuffins in the past that will fix things in the present.” And producer Kevin Feige asked, “Can it be wacky, like in BACK TO THE FUTURE where they’re sneaking around their past selves and suddenly … Read More
EDGE OF TOMORROW
Blunt. Cruise. Repeat. Dying in battle is the new way to meet chicks! Right off the bat, EDGE OF TOMORROW involves time-travel, so if you’re one of those chrono-geeks who’s gonna sit there with your slide-rule and try to finger the anomalies, best you leave right now… The Future. Extra-terrestrial aliens have attacked, and Earth armies are on the defensive … Read More
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
The Wolverine Show, Part VII. Wolverine goes back in time to unify the X-Men of the disco past to stop an event that brings into existence giant robots called Sentinels, who are systematically wiping out X-Men of the dystopian present. It’s a heart-gripping, tension-filled, magnificent, sprawling epic – that doesn’t make one lick of sense! X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST … Read More
CLOUD ATLAS
Cloudy with a chance of Atlas. CLOUD ATLAS is six incredibly evocative movies mashed together to make one incredibly annoying one. It’s bolder than most movies, bigger than most, intelligent and well-produced, with epic sweep across past, present and future societies, with grandiose performances, seamless effects and what seems like a million hanging threads – until we realize CLOUD ATLAS is … Read More
SOURCE CODE
Riding the Lightning Across the (Parallel) Universe. DONNIE DARKO brings his penchant for skipping across parallel universes to the twisted love-child of INCEPTION and GROUNDHOG DAY. Director Duncan Jones (Bowie’s progeny and the wunderkind behind MOON, his film debut) proves that the disturbing resonance and edge-of-seat storytelling finesse he brought to that old-fashioned new tale was not a fluke. SOURCE … Read More
12 MONKEYS
BACK TO THE FUTURE by way of BRAZIL. Like BACK TO THE FUTURE II with Biff in charge forever. Another Terry Gilliam dystopian vision, 12 MONKEYS (inspired by French short film LA JETÉE and modeled after Gilliam’s own inimitable BRAZIL), is a claustrophobic, strangling, time-paradox action stunner; like all Gilliam’s films, it’s also completely off the rails. A subterranean Orwellian … Read More
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
Dive in, the water’s awesome. You might consider me ready to join my mandrill brothers on the deep side of crazy for recommending a movie with a title so obviously geared towards acutely-angled foreheads. But you would be wronger than a deep fryer bank machine. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is the stupidest movie you will see all year. And the … Read More
SLEEPER
OrwelliAllen. Woody Allen pays slapstick homage to Charlie Chaplin in this futuristic satire on totalitarian societies. SLEEPER will be appreciated most by those with their eyes wide open. Milo (Allen) has been cryogenically frozen since 1973, now unfrozen 200 years in the future by scientists, to combat an oppressive government Leader. As with all “future” films of the 1970’s, the future … Read More
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Going and coming across time. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time… He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between… he has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. — Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Everything we learned from Michael J. Fox … Read More
AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY
Swinging! Like a man, man! He’s the sexiest, swingingest secret agent ever to combat evil – DOCTOR Evil, that is…. mwohahaha ha ha ha….He’s Austin Powers, arguably Mike Myers’s greatest, most memorable, most embraced, most quoted icon – in the film that made it all shagadelic, baby! AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY is a hip skewering of the spy … Read More
FREQUENCY
Radio Da Da. And we thought BACK TO THE FUTURE covered all the angles of going back in time to change the present! Jim Caviezel is Jesus and Dennis Quaid his Heavenly Father, who speaks to him through a magical ham radio. Actually, Caviezel is a New York cop, his father a fireman who lost his life years ago. A … Read More
A SOUND OF THUNDER
A Sound of Chunder. A Sound of Thunder. One of the greatest short stories ever written. By one of the grandest Grand Masters of Fantasy, Ray Bradbury. A SOUND OF THUNDER. Vomitous movie. In Bradbury’s science fiction short story, a company called Time Safari offers big game hunters the opportunity to go back in time and kill dinosaurs. Rule Number … Read More
DONNIE DARKO
Darkness is as Darko does… And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The dreams in which I’m dyin’ are the best I’ve ever had… — Tears For Fears, “Mad World.” The Tears For Fears song, Mad World, closes DONNIE DARKO. As it softly meanders under the closing montage of characters, everything in this movie clacks into … Read More
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME
Camping in a Row of Future Tense. I could say this movie was “a whale of a time” but it wasn’t really. Starting with a promising premise, as the story unfolded, it quickly lost its porpoise. (Somebody slap me.) Continuing where STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK left off (sometime in the 23rd century), in STAR TREK IV: THE … Read More
SUPERMAN
One Part Steel, Two Parts Cheese. This movie did for Superman what KING OF KINGS did for Jesus – burned an iconic image of a fictional god into world consciousness. And the Word was made Flesh. And the Flesh was Christopher Reeve. So unknown at the time of his casting that he might as well have been from Krypton, Reeve … Read More
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
The Teen Model Effect. As far as I can gather from THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT’s totally illogical storyline, a teen model time travels backwards to rectify sins of the past so that in the “present” he can hook up with another teen model. Noble? No. Hot? Definitely. The Teen Model Effect: When a teen model flaps his arms in China, it … Read More
TIMELINE
Space-Time Continuum Saved by Surfer Dude & Community Theatre Actress. TIMELINE makes the execrable indecency of THE CORE look like a scientific masterpiece. With costumes borrowed from a traveling Renaissance Festival and actors borrowed from the local community theatre, even the brainless idiocy of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY reads like CITIZEN KANE when weighed against this bone-chilling waste of resources … Read More
PLANET OF THE APES 2001
Monkey Pee, Monkey Poo. It’s Marky Mark’s PLANET OF THE APES! This Tim Burton 2001 remake of the 1968 Franklin J. Schaffner/Charlton Heston classic is much like visiting any given zoo: that ubiquitous whiff of feces on the air… 1st Scene: Chimpnaut blunders space-vehicle simulation, proving he’s not that smart from the outset. Marky Mark appears in shot without his characteristic … Read More