The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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.
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
An enormously entertaining Hong Kong variation on Highlander in which two rival swordsmen are frozen in a glacier and then awakened in the modern day
A time travel that has the near-soporific pace of a Lifetime tv movie. Here Haley Joel Osment discovers that his father built a stable wormhole that allowed him to travel back in time to 1947
Jim Mickle film that starts out as though a police procedural, possibly a supernatural horror film, and then performs an astonishing series of twists to become something else altogether and an absolute must see
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s gonzo, surreal comedies where a married couple buy a house and find it has a portal that takes them twelve hours into the future, while making them younger
At age 80, Harrison Ford returns for what looks like being the last ever Indiana Jones film. It’s not perfect but when you compare to all the other contemporary franchises, this still has the good old adventure spirit
An enormously clever Australian time travel film about the mind-boggling conundrums that occur when a man tries to go back in time and stop his girlfriend leaving only to encounter multiple versions of himself come to fix the snowballing situation
A film with Lovecraftian overtones about a group at the Miskatonic University doing research into time travel that proceeds to go wrong, while unleashing mysterious monsters
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
A spinoff designed to feature Robbie the Robot, the scene-stealer from Forbidden Planet. Here Robbie has been sent back in time to the present where he is befriended by a young boy
This starts off with an amnesiac, possibly hallucinating Adrien Brody who is accused or murder and locked in an asylum, before eventually opening up into a time travel film akin to Twelve Monkeys
An enjoyable comedy where a scientist is visited by his older self who has travelled back in time to beg him not to invent the time machine that he is about to create
French New Wave SF film from director Alain Resnais about a time machine. The idea of a protagonist travelling at random through his own memory is predictive of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five
Chris Marker’s celebrated 28 minute time paradox film, an experimental work that was made at the height of the French New Wave. This later became the basis of Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli makes a mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Dr Strange
The fourth of the Josh Kirby juveniles and the point the series started to become quite well made. This takes a visit to Azabeth’s homeworld of warrior people.
The fifth of the Josh Kirby juvenile adventures where the young time-travelling hero sets out on a quest to the Magic Cavern to find the Shroom People
The sixth and last of the Josh Kirby time-travelling juvenile adventures produced by Charles Band and the best of the series, which takes a trip into Josh’s past
This was the first and one of the weaker of the generally quite likeable films from Charles Band about the time-travelling adventures of a juvenile hero
This was the second and weakest of the Josh Kirby juvenile time travel adventures that takes the young hero and companions to a future where they are enslaved by giants
This was the third of the Josh Kirby juvenile time travelling adventures from Charles Band that takes Josh and his companions to a planet of living toys
One of his earlier efforts from the great Karel Zeman wherein four boys journey through prehistory. Not the equal of Zeman’s later work, it feels more like an illustrated museum tour than a dramatic film
A very cheaply made film (actually a remake of The Time Travelers) about a research laboratory propelled through time. Most of the historical scenes are represented by stock footage
A demented Jeffrey Lau comedy that seems to have no limits on how silly it is willing to be, while parodying just about every other film made around the same time
The US remake of the French time travel comedy Les Visiteurs. With a script by John Hughes, this imports the original film’s stars but misses its comedy charms by a mile
A DC Universe Original Animated Movie that introduces the Legion of Superheroes, their nemeses The Fatal Five and an assortment of new Justice League members to widen diversity
Lightweight and likeable Meg Ryan romcom in which she is romanced by a chivalrous and perfectly mannered Hugh Jackman travelled through time from the 19th Century
A modernised version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Whoopi Goldberg as a physicist who time travels back to Camelot
A Chinese version of The Terminator if you can imagine the android as the hero who travels back in time to learn a lost form of kung fu in order to prevent an alien invasion
Remake of the South Korean film Il Mare, this is a romantic fantasy where Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock write letters to each other while living in the same house two years apart in time
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
The first film adaptation of the popular videogame is a film largely premised around the personality of Angelina Jolie. Outside of that, the film is a half-baked series of plot ends and action scenes taken from better films
Adaptation of a classic SF short story about children’s toys from the future that give them expanded mental powers. Much of the story has been dropped in favour of banal New Age thinking
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
An extraordinary work from the French New Wave filled with incredible visuals as lovers drift through an ornate hotel where memory and time itself seems to shift
A thoughtful and well-written Cryogenic Sleepers Awake film that charts the culture shock experienced by two men frozen in the 1960s and thawed out in the present day
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
A spinoff from Pixar’s Toy Story films that gives Buzz Lightyear a film all of his own. A likeable if fairly routine space adventure but aargh the rewrites to series continuity
A light fantasy comedy from Australia in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
From Rian Johnson, a time travel film that is uneven but is mostly conducted with considerable cleverness and intelligence. One of the few multiplex films driven by plot and some clever twists rather than action
Surprisingly halfway reasonable big screen remake of the 1960s tv series, this welcomely dumps the campy silliness of the show for a grittier, much more realistic take on the characters
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
A Found Footage film that has fun uniting wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning
South Korean romantic film about a couple exchanging letters across time. This later underwent a Hollywood remake as The Lake House with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
An extremely clever romantic comedy where Kaley Cuoco repeatedly returns back through time to replay her one perfect day, a date with Pete Davidson
One of the more enjoyable efforts from the mid-2000s dead zone where Disney animation with filled with ideas that left-you scratching your head, this quickly gets demented and emerges like The Jetsons colliding with The Royal Tenenbaums
There have been some very sophisticated time paradox films in recent years. At complete contrast, this is a comedy that has a great deal of fun with the premise of a guy and assorted temporal copies of himself running about
Adaptation of a Doris Lessing novel set in a collapsing future England. Nicely portrayed but crytpically surreal touches end up baffling
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
Appealingly lightweight whimsy from Woody Allen in which Owen Wilson keeps timeslipping between the present and 1920s Paris to meet the artistic/literary greats
Film adaptation of a time travel novel by John Varley, one of the finest SF writers in the world, that ends up bluntening and dumbing the story down
The incomprehensibly manic antics of the Minions have a cuteness appeal that has overspilled the Despicable Me films and seemed like it is in danger of taking over pop culture in the last couple of years; here they get a film all to themselves with amiably lightweight results
Disney Channel film about a trio of kids who build a time machine and use it to help people around the school
Intelligent and absorbing thriller where a freak storm allows a woman to communicate with the past only to inadvertently create a new timeline where her life is very different
Mamoru Hosoda film nominated for the Best Animated Film at Academy Awards. A young boy jealous at the arrival of a baby sister is visited by her future self and travels through time to meet his family at different periods
DreamWorks animated film based on an old Rocky and Bullwinkle segment about a time-travelling genius dog and his adopted human son. This takes a relentlessly content-free approach to history that strips it down to no more than a series of giddy 3D slapstick gags for the single digit age groups
Not as you might assume an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine but another cheap and tatty Syfy Channel production that grafts Wells’ Morlocks onto the formula for their typical monster movie
An anthology of comedy skits that sets out to be in as bad taste as possible – you are left astounded how far a film has to go to offend in this post-South Park era. That and wondering if the producers had kidnapped some of the stars’ family members to force them to participate
Jaco Van Dormael film that reaches for epic ideas in a story about multiple life pathways and a babble of ideas taken from physics but fails to assemble them in a way that makes much sense
At first glance, this film about a teenager meeting her future self seems too cute and lightweight, but emerges as something extraordinary
The hugely underrated Vincent Ward makes a film about Mediaeval pilgrims travelling through time to the present. Shot in an series of extraordinary images that show how bewildering the modern world would be to them
Solid time travel film about a man who struggles to find a way back to his love as her ex keeps changing the timeline so she doesn’t leave him
The first of several sequels Albert Pyun made to Nemesis. This copies The Terminator with bodybuilder Sue Price being pursued through East Africa by killer androids
The third of Albert Pyun’s Nemesis films about time-travelling cyborgs – not much plot just action scenes and some moments of undeniable strangeness
A very strange film where widow Adrienne Barbeau finds an amnesiac Keir Dullea on a Greek island who shows mysterious abilities and may have come from the future
A batshit crazy film involving Nostradamus who is a present-day cop, a time travelling assassin trying to bring about the Biblical Apocalypse at The Millennium, plus alternate timelines and a psychic FBI agent
A timeloop film with a difference where Mary-Louise Parker takes pills that help her go back and relive the previous five days as she seeks to find ways to travel back even further
An Asylum mockbuster released at the same time as Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C., this involves time travel mission into the prehistoric past that accidentally brings a dinosaur back to the present
There have been some ingenious time paradox films in recent years, this is a modest low-budget offering in which a scientist travels one hour into the future only to find everybody at the lab has been killed. Returning in time, he tries to stop everything from happening.
SF action film with Eric Roberts as a future cop travelling through time trying to stop kids before they become criminals
This is Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Back to the Future wherein housewife Kathleen Turner wakes up back as her high school self and gets the opportunity to remake her life’s choices
On the back of popularity of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the Elm Street films, Robert Englund was cast in this version where the emphasis is on the slasher element, which works far better than you might think
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
This Syfy Channel production can’t seem to decide if it is a sequel or a remake of the 1984 film. Michael Paré turn up in both versions but goes from being the hero to a menacing heavy. The original had its moments but this is generic and routine in all ways
A sequel to The Philadelphia Experiment where Brad Johnson is thrown into an alternate timeline where the Nazis have overtaken the USA
Tim Burton’s much disliked remake. Certainly, the ape makeups are superb. While Burton touches many points with the original, he has dropped the biting satire in favour of adventure, while the ending left everyone scratching their heads
The film that started it all. This takes what could have been a jokey premise and delivers it in bold, exciting stokes. What elevates the film is Rod Serling’s script. filled with embittered soliloquies that become a biting commentary on the human condition, before the film reaches one of the great cinematic twist endings
An exceptional time travel film, one of the best to emerge in some time. Adapted from a classic Robert Heinlein story, the pleasure of the film all comes in seeing its twists and turns come together into the most ingenious temporal paradox ever conceived
Weepie drama in which Sandra Bullock becomes unstuck in time flipping back and forward with the foreknowledge that her husband Julian McMahon will befall a tragedy
Complex and fascinating film where two friends accidentally create a time machine and soon faces multiple versions of themselves
Essentially Platoon meets Jurassic Park. A surprisingly watchable film that places a unit of soldiers in the midst of the Vietnam War up against dinosaurs where things get bloody and ferocious
Adaptation of the popular videogame that ventures into Arabian Nights adventure, this was a box-office flop. It swashbuckles entertainingly but Jake Gyllenhaal feels badly miscast as a buffed adventure hero
A zero expectation film that turns out to be surprisingly good. Falling somewhere between Primer and Chronicle, this does a reasonable job of showing its time travel device in action and the unintended consequences
TV movie in which aging William Devane travels back in time to try and prevent the death of his father
Unusual fantasy film where a woman is allowed to replay the last year again and tries to prevent it ending in her shooting her husband
Modest and halfway reasonable variant on Groundhog Day with a group of people caught in the same loop of time where everything manages to go wrong each time
Japanese SF film that makes a rather enjoyable magpie collage out of a Terminator time travel action plot married to John Woo and Matrix action stylistics
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are resurrected in a new animated film that feels like a watered-down fix designed for Ritalin-deprived youth
Extraordinarily ambitious film all shot in a single take at the former St Petersburg Winter Palace where the camera drifts dream-like from room to room and in and out of periods of Russian history. More n illustrated art and history program than a dramatic film but beautiful to watch.
This is a wholly unnecessary sequel to Donnie Darko, featuring the same bafflingly inexplicable time-blurring things happening to his sister but without the same culty weirdness
Quirky indie film about a possibly deluded man who advertises for a time travel companion. The actuality of the time travel element is kept ambiguous and this plays out as a relationship drama that overflows with charm and freshness
Clive Barker based work about a monk pursuing two demonic succubi through time to the present. Clive Barker watered down for the Sci-Fi Channel but worth watching for the imaginative creature effects
The third in a popular series of films about a Little League baseball team, this involves a time travel element
A comedy about a guy who obtains a time travel device and uses it to go back and try to prevent his girlfriend breaking up with him
A Michel Gondry film that blurs the line between dream and reality with hilariously offbeat regard. Gondry indulges his eccentricities to the maximum with quite sublime results
Adaptation of Susan Cooper’s popular fantasy series handled by people who have no interest in the material and badly rewrite/mangle it in order try to turn it into a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings knockoff
By this point, the Sharknado series has gone from an amusingly tongue-in-cheek original to a series that is widely signalling that it is not taking anything that happens remotely seriously
Not entirely uninteresting but also not entirely satisfactory adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, flipping back and forward between the events of his own life