A.I. Tales (2019)
Science Fiction Anthology
An anthology of four SF tales, short films from various directors around the world, although surprisingly none that feature Artificial Intelligences
Time Travel
Time travel is the ability to move back and forward throughout time. Methods of doing so vary from the time machine created by H.G. Wells to DeLorean and British police box to portals and bracelets even hot tubs. Time warps and portals are also popular while some people have the mental ability to travel.
Stories vary depending on which direction one goes in time, including those in which characters travel into various futures or have adventures in past historical eras. Other stories include travellers from the future returning to the present, or else people plucked out of or awoken from the past into the present.
Stories can range from simple adventures to the more challenging complexities of time paradox stories and others where time travel ends up changing the timeline creating an Alternate History or Alternate Timeline. Other stories deal with time wars or the establishment temporal police forces to ensure the integrity of the timeline.
Other treatments include stories in which time is frozen, where individuals are caused in Timeloops and made to repeat a small pocket of time over and over, or where time is reversed.
A.li.ce (1999)
Anime/Dystopian Future/Time Travel
This was the first anime film made in CGI, an ambitious SF film involving a time travel plot and a struggle against a machine-dominated future
About Time (2013)
Time Travel Romantic Comedy
Time travel film that feels like a romantic comedy version of The Time Traveler’s Wife (with Rachel McAdams in the same role in both films). Played with a good deal of feelgood warmth and likeability by all
Action Replayy (2010)
Bollywood Version of Back to the Future
Bollywood film that is a blatant copy of Back to the Future with the young hero going back in time to prevent his parents from divorcing. Lame comedy routines but some extremely colourful song and dance numbers
The Adam Project (2022)
Time Travel
Likeable but lightweight time travel film where Ryan Reynolds gains the aid of his twelve year-old self after travelling back in time to the present on a mission to save the future
Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
Alice in Wonderland Sequel
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
The Alien Agenda: Endangered Species (1997)
Alien Takeover Anthology
The second of Kevin J. Kindenmuth’s surprisingly good compilations of video shorts around the loose theme of alien invasion and takeover
Alienoid (2022)
South Korean Time-Hopping SF Action
A South Korean SF film that comes with a wide canvas involving alien invasion, time hopping between two eras and some epic action in possibly one of the most head-scratching plots seen in some time
Alienoid: Return to the Future (2024)
South Korean Time-Hopping SF Action
The second part of the Korean time-hopping/alien invasion film where many of the plot strands from the extremely confusing first film are at least wrapped up
Altitude (2010)
Monster on a Plane
Essentially a feature version of The Twilight Zone‘s classic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode, this generates some remarkable tension with a group trapped in mid-air in a small plane before a lame twist ending
The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972)
Children's Ghost Story/Time Travel
This Victorian-set children’s film has not been widely seen and has gained a small cult reputation for many years its ambitious plot involving a ghost story and time travel
An American in Austen (2024)
Modern Girl Transported Back Into Pride and Prejudice
A modern girl pining for the perfect man is transported back into the world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice where she ends up disrupting the story
Anastasia: Once Upon a Time (2020)
Princess Anastasia Time Travels to the Present
Bizarre family film in which Russian princess Anastasia travels through time to the present day and discovers mall culture
The Andromeda Strain (2008)
Virus from Space/Michael Crichton Adaptation
TV series remake of Michael Crichton’s novel about the attempts to contain a viral outbreak from space. Crichton’s story was a straightforward work, whereas the mini-series has been absurdly overburdened with other plots
Apex (1994)
War with Robots/Alternate Timelines
Passable B-budget 1990s direct-to-video sf/action film about robots and humans warring across time that develops out an interesting plot about a changed timeline
Aporia (2023)
Altering the Timeline
Excellent low-key time travel film where Judy Greer is faced with the choice of eliminating the drunk driver who killed her husband from the timeline – only to end up with unexpected results
Army of Darkness (1992)
Evil Dead Sequel/War with the Dead/Horror Comedy
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell make their third Evil Dead film. The series hit a peak with the delirious balance of horror and comedy in the second film but here the comedy over-balances and becomes too broad
Army of Frankensteins (2014)
Frankenstein Monster Time Travels Back to the Civil War
This comes with an insane mash-ups of ideas – modern day Frankenstein monster is thrown back in time to the Civil War (in a process that also creates multiple copies) and ends up fighting on the Northern side
As Time Goes By (1988)
Gonzo Time Travel
A very eccentric Australian film about a man wound into solving a temporal paradox by aliens who time travel in a greasy spoon diner
Assassin 33 A.D. (2020)
Christian Film/Time Traveller Seeks to Eliminate Jesus Christ
A faith-based film that comes with a great hook where a time-traveller seeks to go back and kill Jesus, eliminating Christianity from history
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Spy Movie Spoof
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Spy Movie Spoof
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody of the James Bond film and more focused on a series of broad scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Marvel Comics Superhero Team-Up
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Avengers Grimm: Time Wars (2018)
Team-Up Between Fairytale Princesses
Released at the same time as Avengers: Infinity War, this was a mockbuster from The Asylum involving a team-up between fairytale characters. The third in their Avengers Grimm series
Awaken (2012)
Romance Across Time in Dreams
This is a romance film with conceptual ambitions that starts out by killing the heroine in the first scene and then has she and the guy meeting in lucid time-travelling dreams
Back to the Future (1985)
Time Travel
This was a huge hit at the time and has become one of the most indisputable pop culture artifacts of its era. The film takes a clever time travel plot and infuses it with an effortless energy to prove a considerable winner
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Time Travel
The first of the Back to the Future sequels has a whiplash ingenuity that propels us through several different scenarios, including a trip to the future, a dark alternate present and requiring Michael J. Fox to duck unseen in and around the margins of the first film
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Time Travel
Third of the Back to the Future films, which takes everything back in time to the Old West. Probably the slightest of the trilogy, this nevertheless goes out with a rousing farewell
Batman Ninja (2018)
Batman Anime
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991)
The Beastmaster Comes to L.A.
Excruciating sequel to The Beastmaster that transports Marc Singer’s Dar to contemporary L.A. The whole film is wrecked by an attitude that seems unable to take the proceedings seriously.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Planet of the Apes Sequel/Telepathic Mutants
The second and most underrated of the Planet of the Apes films. For a time it repeats the original but gains considerable imagination and a striking satiric bite with the introduction of the mutants
Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)
Time Travel to Post-Holocaust Future
B budget film from Edgar G. Ulmer that was made quickly to exploit the success of George Pal’s The Time Machine concerning an Air Force pilot who is thrown through time into a mutant ruled future
Biggles (1986)
Time Travelling WWI Flying Ace
Biggles, Captain W.E. Johns’ famous flying ace, appeared in a long-running series of boys books. In his big screen film outing. he has the ignominy of playing second fiddle to a young American hero in a Back to the Future copy
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
Time-Travelling Slackers Reach Middle-Age
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Slackers in the Afterlife
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Time-Travelling Slackers
A quirky hit that jumped aboard the 1980s popularity of time travel themes and laid into them with an appealingly offbeat eccentricity. The film that propelled Keanu Reeves onto become a star
Black Hollow Cage (2017)
Time Paradox
Cryptic Spanish film that eventually coalesces into a unique time travel story, like a more enigmatic version of Timecrimes as we watch pieces of a beautifully wrought temporal jigsaw puzzle slot into place
Black Knight (2001)
Modern Man in Mediaeval Times Comedy
An uncredited adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Martin Lawrence as a hip modern African-American man thrown back to Mediaeval times
Bodies (2023)
Cross-Historical Detective Story/Time Travel
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
Space Opera/Man Unfrozen in the Future
In the aftermath of Star Wars, the comic-book/serial hero was revived in this heavily Star Wars influenced remake that was released theatrically and then served as the pilot of a tv series
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Alternate Timelines
This was dismissed at the time because of its star Ashton Kutcher but is a surprisingly good film in which Kutcher finds the ability to travel back in time and alter his past
The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006)
Alternate Timelines
The Butterfly Effect was not a film set up for a sequel but we get one here anyway with a different person flipping back in time to change his rather dull and uninteresting life
Camille Rewinds (2012)
Time Travel/Divorcee Revisists Her Youth
This French film is an uncredited copy of Peggy Sue Got Married wherein director/star Noemie Lvovsky a dissatisfied divorcee who is propelled back to her high school graduating year and gets to relive her life choices
Captain Nova (2021)
Time Travel
An appealing Danish-made film in which a pilot travels back in time from the future to save the world from environmental disaster but finds she is now stuck in her twelve year-old body
Cashback (2006)
Youth Can Freeze Time
Quite magical debut film that showed great promise for director Sean Ellis in its unique premise about a bored supermarket employee on the night shift who appears able to freeze time
Cavegirl (1985)
Nerd Time Travels Back to Prehistory Comedy
Witless and inane comedy in which nerdy high school student Daniel Roebuck is thrown back in time to the Stone Age where he romances cavegirl Cindy Ann Thompson
A Chinese Tall Story (2005)
Gonzo Journey to the West Adaptation
Another adaptation of Journey to the West. Coming from Jeffrey Lau, a director who specialises in rowdy, slapstick films, this is the most nutso adaptation of the story ever, winding in everything from alien visitors and Transformers
Click (2006)
Remote Control to Life Comedy
An Adam Sandler comedy in which he is an ordinary family man who is given a magical remote control that allows him to pause and fast forward his way through the boring bits of his life
Clockstoppers (2002)
Time-Stopping Device/Children's Film
A one idea film about a device that can stop time. In the directorial hands of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Jonathan Frakes, this is given a juvenile focus where the device serves no more ends than a series of slapstick pratfalls
The Coming (1981)
Possession by a Salem Witch
1950s B movie director Bert I Gordon makes a film in which present-day schoolgirl Susan Swift is possessed by her ancestor who was burned at the stake as a witch
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949)
Modern Man Time Travels Back to Camelot
Adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic about a modern man thrown back to the time of King Arthur. This has been made as a vehicle for Bing Crosby and makes for fairly excruciating viewing today
Counter Clockwise (2016)
Time Paradox
The time paradox film has always been one of the most ingenious and conceptually challenging SF films in recent years with the likes of Timecrimes and Predestination. This is a B-budgeted variant
Cyborg 2087 (1966)
Cyborg from the Future
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
Cyborg She (2007)
Romance With a Time-Travelling Cyborg
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)
Doctor Who Film
The second of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
Danger! Danger! (2021)
Adventure Film Homage
This is an enjoyable low-budget homage to the Indiana Jones film that comes with a number of knowing references to the genre and the addition of a clever time travel plot
Deadpool 2 (2018)
Marvel Comics Superhero
Deadpool was an hilarious breath of fresh air amid the Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel is even better, with the self-deflating, fourth-wall breaking humour even funnier and more slickly polished action
Deja Vu (2006)
Time Travel
Tony Scott directed time travel film with Denzel Washington viewing and then entering into events of the past in an effort to stop a terrorist bombing. Action driven as you might expect with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer
Detention (2011)
Gonzo High School Film/Slasher Parody/Time Travel/Bodyswap
A film with insane creativity and spilling over with snide pop culture wit. Like a mash-up of Bad Kids Go to Hell, John Dies at the End and Back to the Future written by a love child of Kevin Williamson and Diablo Cody
The Diabolical (2015)
Haunted House Story with an SF Twist
This gives all appearance to being another copy of Insidious – a ghost story with an evil-sounding adjective for a title. The film settles in in predictable ways; then throws the ghost story angle on its head with a surprise SF twist
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010)
Anime/Alternate Timeline/Reality-Bending Teenager
Extraordinary anime where the members of an after school club secretly harbour great powers. From there, this expands out with reality-bending scope
Ditto (2000)
Cross-Time Radio Communication
A South Korean film that came out around the same time as Frequency and has an almost identical premise about two people who start talking by radio while separated in time by twenty years.
Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)
Doctor Who Film
This was the first of two Doctor Who movies produced during the height of Dalekmania during the 1960s. Alas a comedy element in the form of the asinine buffoonery of Roy Castle is allowed to dominate and kills the show off
Donnie Darko (2001)
Troubled Teen's Precognitive Visions
A thoroughly overrated cult classic. A baffling mixture of precognition, time travel, sinister talking bunnies and 1980s satire. What this doesn’t do is ever fall together into a coherent explanation about what is going on
Don’t Let Go (2019)
Cellphone Calls Across Time
Blumhouse film that borrows the basics of Frequency where a detective starts receiving phone calls from his murdered niece from several days in the past and tries to prevent her murder
Doomsday (2015)
Time Traveller Come to Save the Future/Killer Cyborg
Not to be confused with Neil Marshall’s Doomsday. This is a surprisingly good, low-budget British SF film that serves up the essential plot of The Terminator but with a number of clever touches of its own
The Door Into Summer (2021)
Time Travel
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
Earthtastrophe (2016)
Earth Transported to Another Solar System
Syfy Channel disaster movie where Earth is suddenly transported into another Solar System amid cheap effects and an improbable time travel solution is sought to reverse this
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Man Forced to Repeat the Same Day Over/Alien Invasion
The rarity of a summer blockbuster with smarts – think Groundhog Day reworked by way of Battle Los Angeles. The timeloop idea is dealt with in clever ways making for an action film driven by an original sf story
11.22.63 (2016)
Time Traveller Tries to Prevent the Assassination of JFK/Stephen King Adaptation
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
Eliminators (1986)
Action Team vs Mad Scientist
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band’s Empire Productions, a comic-book of a film that assembles an action team of various abilities on an adventure up against a mad scientist
Epsilon (1997)
Alien Visitor in the Australian Outback
A film from Rolf de Heer, a director who makes highly unusual works and should be better known than he is. In this, an alien woman befriends a man after she appears in the Australian Outback
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
Planet of the Apes Sequel/Time Travel
Third of the original Planet of the Apes films. This is an enjoyable take that brings the talking apes back in time to the present-day and where the emphasis is more on comedy
Event 16 (2006)
Time Travel
A homemade New Zealand film that attempts to pull an ambitious time travel story that takes place in multiple era with temporal police intervening after a scientist invents a time portal
The Final Countdown (1980)
Aircraft Carrier Time-Travels Back to Pearl Harbor
A big-budget film that has one of the great SF premises – what if a modern aircraft carrier were transported back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor – only to end up blowing it.
5ive Days to Midnight (2004)
Briefcase from the Future
Mini-series with the intriguing premise of Timothy Hutton receiving a briefcase from the future with clues that foretells his death in five days time. This befalls utterly predictable handling and is padded out to fill a five-hour slot
The Flash (2023)
Comic-Book Superhero
Despite a poor box-office performance and a troubled production behind the scenes, it is a surprise what a good film this is, easily outstripping the last half-dozen MCU films put together
The Flight of Dragons (1982)
Animation/Epic Fantasy
One of Rankin-Bass’s animated films, this has an ambitious epic fantasy plot with original themes about the line between science and magic, although this is undone by Rankin-Bass’s limited animation
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Alien-Abducted Child Returns
Smart and intelligent Disney film where Joey Cramer play a kid who goes missing and reappears some years later unaged, only to realise he has been abducted by aliens and can control a spaceship
The Flight That Disappeared (1961)
Abducted Plane/Judgment from the Future
Film in which a plane in whisked outside of space and time and the passengers are placed on trial from the children of the future for their part in designing nuclear weapons
Forever Young (1992)
Cryogenic Sleeper Awakes
Popular film with Mel Gibson as a man who is cryogenically frozen in the 1940s and thawed out in the present. The romantic focus of the film is undone by some absurd plotting. An early script from J.J. Abrams
Forgotten Experiment (2023)
Time Travel
A Russian SF film where a plane is forced to put down on an island where people find themselves caught up in a series of time travel experiments and thrown between different eras
Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
Time-Traveller Meets Frankenstein and Mary Shelley
Roger Corman disappointed with his return to the director’s chair after twenty years. He adapts a Brian Aldiss novel about a time-traveller meeting both Mary Shelley and Dr Frankenstein
Free Birds (2013)
Animation/Time-Travelling Talking Turkeys
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
Freejack (1992)
Future Body-Snatching/Time Travel
Emilio Estevez is snatched into the future and pursued for his body by bounty hunter Mick Jagger in an SF film that makes no sense at all. A film more worth watching for some bizarrely awful performances
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)
Time-Travelling Science-Fiction Fans
Science-fiction fans go time travelling in this British film that offers a good many wry fannish in-jokes mixed with a modestly clever time travel scenario
The Future (2011)
Whimsical Relationship Drama/Magical Realism
Oddball and whimsical – welcome to the world of Miranda July who serves up a quirky relationship drama peopled with talking cats, conversations with The Moon and time-freezing abilities
Future Cops (1993)
Time-Travelling Superheroic Battle
Manically paced Hong Kong action comedy about a time-travelling action team purportedly inspired by the Street Fighter videogame. Imagine The Terminator as a manic slapstick comedy with martial arts sequences.
Future Hunters (1986)
Action Adventure/Time Travel/Quest for a Mystical Object
Undeniably entertaining Filipino action film that tries to throw in everything including time travel, post-holocaust action, adventure quests, magical artifacts, lost worlds, Nazis and dwarves
Gandahar (1988)
Animation/Planetary Adventure
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
Anime/Time Travel
Mamoru Hosoda delivers an appealingly sweet anime about a girl who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. Based on a popular Japanese Young Adult novel
Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
Japanese Monster Bash
The eighteenth Godzilla film and one of the best of the modern era. This has the most conceptually audacious plot of any Godzilla film and overflows with wild ideas involving time travel and changing the timeline
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025)
Time Traveller
A completely mad and all over the place film with Sam Rockwell as a time traveller (or madman) arrived at a diner to recruit six people on a mission to save the world from an evil A.I.
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones (2024)
H.P. Lovecraft Film
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
Happy Accidents (2000)
Time Travel Romance
Clever and intelligent comedy where Marisa Tomei finds the perfect man (Vincent D’Onofrio) who also claims to be a time traveller from the future. The film sits in an appealing state of ambiguity about whether this is true
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Young Wizard
The third Harry Potter film where it seems all that it took for the series to become quite good was the exit of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the entry of a new director in Alfonso Cuaron
The History of Time Travel (2014)
Time Travel Mockumentary
An ingenious mockumentary about the development of a time travel machine. This takes place as a ‘documentary’ discussing the invention but the cleverness is in seeing how small details keep changing in the background
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (1981)
Gonzo SF
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Time Travel Comedy
A raucous and vulgar, if at times undeniably funny, comedy where John Cusack and three friends use a hot tub at a resort that causes them to travel back in time to the 1980s.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)
Time Travel Comedy
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten