Good time travel movies

[CalMeacham]

Although there are a lot of good time travel stories, I’m pretty disappointed in Time Travel movies.

The best? If you’re talking about movies in which Time Travel is important to the story line, then The Terminator and Terminator II win, hands down.

But to tell the truth, time travel doesn’t actually get used much in the films, except to set up the premise. Everything happens in the present day, except for “flashbacks” (“flash-forwards?”) to the future.

So if you want films that explore the use and effects of time travel, the Back to the Future series does a pretty good job, and I’m surprised no one else did it earlier.

As I say, I really don’t much like most time travel films. Time After Time is cute, but not great. I hated the new version of ** The Time Machine**. The 1960 version seems sterile and not a very good adaptation of Wells – it wholly misses the point.

Freejack isn’t really a “Time Travel” movie. It’s based on a Robert Sheckley novel, “Immortality Delivered” (AKA “Immortality, Inc.”) that is a hell of a lot better than this film. I understand that there was a British TV adaptation of it in the 1960s. Maybe someday they’ll do it straight. But the hero ends up suddenly in the future – he has no ability to go back, or even farther into the future. I don’t really consider these things Time Travel. There’s a host of such movies – World Without End, for instance, the Roddenbery pilots Planet Earth and its sequels, and they’re all bad.

The Time Travellers, Terror from the year 5000, Cyborg 2750, …yechhh.

Frankenstein Unbound – interesting, in being based on a reportedly good Brian Aldiss book, but I never read it. The movie seems stupid and hopelessly confused.

[aleong]

A few years ago, the South Korean film industry turned out a lot of fascinating films around time travel, many of which are available for sale/rent on all-region DVD or VCD:

Il Mare: A man and a woman living two years apart find that they can communicate with each other through a ‘magic mailbox’.

Ditto: Two college students living 21 years apart accidently connect via ham radio (a romantic melodrama approach to “Frequency”)

Peppermint Candy: A man who has lost everything commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, only to find himself going back in time, stopping at key points in his life over the past twenty years (“Forrest Gump” meets “Memento”)

2009 Lost Memories: In an alternate universe, Japan won WW2 and Korea is a province of Japan after an assassination attempt on Korea’s Japanese governor fails in 1909-- a fact that is uncovered by a Korean-born member of the Japanese Bureau of Investigation.

[AmbushBug]

*Originally posted by aleong *
Il Mare: A man and a woman living two years apart find that they can communicate with each other through a ‘magic mailbox’.

Sounds a lot like Love Letter, a Hallmark movie.

**2009 Lost Memories: In an alternate universe, Japan won WW2 and Korea is a province of Japan after an assassination attempt on Korea’s Japanese governor fails in 1909-- a fact that is uncovered by a Korean-born member of the Japanese Bureau of Investigation. **

This one sounds like Fatherland with Rutger Hauer - originally a book by Robert Harris.

[aleong]

*Originally posted by AmbushBug *
**Sounds a lot like Love Letter, a Hallmark movie.

This one sounds like Fatherland with Rutger Hauer - originally a book by Robert Harris. **

True… some similarities to Hallmark’s TV movie, but not as sappy, plus there were some interesting ideas with respect to how the two characters tried to interact in the real world despite living two years apart.

As for “Fatherland”, while that film is rooted in the alternative history genre, there are time travel elements in “2009 Lost Memories” with an attempt made to correct the skewed timeline… and if you are a John Woo fan, there are plenty of pyrotechnics too.

[Snickers]

Army of Darkness.

Okay, so it’s only a little about time travel. But you have to admit, it’s a great movie. Love that Ash.

Snicks

[MovieMogul]

aleong says: Peppermint Candy: A man who has lost everything commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, only to find himself going back in time, stopping at key points in his life over the past twenty years (“Forrest Gump” meets “Memento”)

Thought the movie is brilliant (and probably unavailable in the US), I think this is a mischaracterization of the movie. The narrative in PC merely moves backwards for the audience, not the protagonist. He is not aware of events in his future as we see him experience events in his past–we are merely seeing the incidents of his life played out in reverse order. This is used to surprisingly good and poignant effect (it’s a better film than Memento, IMHO), but it is not about a character travelling through time.

My votes go to The Terminator, La Jetee (which 12 Monkeys was based on, Groundhog Day, and the Simpsons TOH episode, Time and Punishment.

[aleong]

*Originally posted by ArchiveGuy *
Thought the movie is brilliant (and probably unavailable in the US), I think this is a mischaracterization of the movie. The narrative in PC merely moves backwards for the audience, not the protagonist. He is not aware of events in his future as we see him experience events in his past–we are merely seeing the incidents of his life played out in reverse order. This is used to surprisingly good and poignant effect (it’s a better film than Memento, IMHO), but it is not about a character travelling through time.

Depending on your interpretation of the film’s final scene (where the main character lies by a riverbed and hears a train approaching), the protagonist may have actually moved back through time, if only in his mind, as if he was seeing his life flash before his eyes. His tears could be representative of his knowledge that this is the last moment in his life in which he is truly happy, given what he knows about the future.

[MovieMogul]

I would say that interpretation is certainly “possible”, but incredibly generous, especially since there are no other signifiers in the other phases of his life that indicate of any larger awareness on his part of the assorted ironies that emerge in the choices he makes through his life.*

Still, great to have a published film author on board. I’ve mentioned PC here in the past, but have not seen nearly as many Korean films (or new-Asian films for that matter) as I would have liked. Looking forward to your further contributions here.

*Could that sentence have any more prepositional phrases? That’s why I’m not an author

[SuperNova]

*Originally posted by Deep Throat *
**One of the Ray Bradbury cronicles has an excellent perspectiveon time travel and the reprocussions about what happens when you go back in time to hunt dinosaurs. Also, Southpark and the Simpsons had a time travel episode. And if you are really trying to fill up time, get old episodes of Sliders…although it’s more of adimensional thing than time thing. **

That Bradbury story is called “A Sound of Thunder.” Regarding the OP, it is actually being made into a movie for release next year.. Sadly, I’m afraid this great little story could be ruined by the likes of Peter Hyams, who brought us such classics as Time Cop :rolleyes: . We’ll see.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

*Originally posted by Zebra *
****I’ll second Time After Time and throw in The Navigator: A Journey Across Time. The Navigator is an Aussie film, not a Disney film. **

Oh, yeah – The Navigator is a trippy little movie, interesting and bizarre, and definitely worth checking out if you like the genre.

12 Monkeys is probably my favorite in the field; Time Bandits, in my idiosyncratic opinion, sucked ass.

Daniel

[PaperTowel]

Biggles?

[PaperTowel]

I’m sorry; make that Biggles: Adventures in Time.

[Politzania]

If unintentional time travel is included:

Slaughterhouse-Five

“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time…”

[Chronos]

As the official time-obsessed nerd on this board (my obsession has thus far brought me through four years of grad school and a master’s degree, and still going strong), let me add yet another voice to the 12 Monkeys crowd. It is without a doubt the best time travel movie I’ve ever seen. Don’t be fooled by the advertisements it got; it’s far better than the ads made it out to be.

The Back to the Future movies were plenty fun, but the time travel elements bear no resemblence to what might plausibly be expected, and aren’t even internally consistent. Great flicks to laugh at on a Friday night, but thinking about them isn’t recommended.

And the tragedy of the recent version of The Time Machine is that it could very easily have been excellent, but do to lack of attention to details, it stank instead. As an example: During the sped-up action while he’s going into the future, we watch the modern New York being built in what’s only a few seconds to us… Except that at the same time, we see a plane fly past. So it takes just as long for a jet airliner to cover a distance equal to its length, as it does to build a skyscraper. And the whole movie is riddled with things like that.

[Stuffy]

The Grand Tour I’ve almost always seen it titled as Disasters in Time. I won’t detail the plot, but watch it it’s pretty good. Stars Jeff Daniels.

[aleong]

Don’t forget the “Star Trek” forays into time travel (which has become more of a crutch these days). The best would be “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”… “double dumbass on you!”.