Ten Movies That Play with Time to Melt Your Mind
Time travel has recently been the center of Marvel and DC movies. Here are some other movies that play with time – but without galactic villains and superheroes.
12 Monkeys
Terry Gilliam’s tale of time travel in order to save humanity has some excellent performances. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner in 2030 who is selected to go back in time to figure out where a plague that wiped out a chunk of humanity started. His mission is waylaid when he’s committed to a psych ward after ranting about time travel and the plague on the streets of Philidelphia – and there the story begins.
It’s a great ride that has Gilliam’s signature world-building and contains one of Brad Pitt’s best performances. Definitely one of the best movies that play with time of the 90s.
La Jetée
Gilliam based 12 Monkeys on this French film by Chris Marker. It’s one of the more experimental movies that play with time. A prisoner in the post-apocalyptic Paris aftermath of World War III is used as a test subject for time travel. The goal is “to call past and future to the rescue of the present” in order to save humanity. The story is told almost entirely in stills with narration to replicate the process of time travel. It examines our connections with the past and the nature of memory.
Edge of Tomorrow aka Live Die Repeat
Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) has never seen combat. Even so, the powers that be drop him into a suicide mission. He dies within minutes and then he wakes up into a time loop that has him fighting and dying in the same battle over and over and over again. He eventually figures out how to use that time to increase his skills and with the help of Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) tries to save the day.
If you enjoy watching Tom Cruise get his ass kicked a bunch, watch this movie that plays with time. It’s fun, it’s well-written, and it has awesome visuals.
Primer
If you like sci-fi to be ridiculously scientifically accurate and a bit obtuse, this is your movie. Two engineers that build error-checking tech accidentally discover an A to B time loop effect. They create a time machine that capitalizes on the effect, one that can transport humans. They become obsessed with it, and things get dark fast. Primer does a hell of a lot with its $7k budget and is rightly considered to be one of the best (possibly THE best) time travel movies ever made.
Arrival
Based on Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, this almost dreamy sci-fi movie drifts through two timelines. Alien ships appear across the globe with no clear motive. The military calls on linguist Louise Banks to learn the aliens’ language. Its symbols turn out to be deeper than our understanding of communication. I don’t really want to say much beyond the fact that it’s brilliant. It’s a gorgeous and immersive Denis Villeneuve (the same director behind the Dune movies) film; Amy Adams is great.
Timecrimes
Another movie made on a shoestring budget that packs a wallop. Protagonist Héctor becomes part of a causal loop thanks to a neighbor with a time machine. The loop forces him to confront multiple versions of himself. Its disorienting and creative storytelling more than makes up for a lack of showy social effects.
Toki o kakeru shôjo
This is the most light-hearted entry on this list. Teenager Makoto Konno gains the ability to go back in time after an accident. She ends up in a time loop and spends her time getting perfect grades, avoiding being tardy, and spending a good amount of time singing karaoke. She chooses to improve herself but soon discovers that her actions have consequences for those around her.
It won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, among other awards. It’s a real gem.
Groundhog Day
Harold Ramis’s dark, existential comedy starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Weatherman Phil Connors relives the same 24 hours in Punxsutawney until he figures out how to make it stop. What he does in those loops is hilarious, sad, and touching. It’s a classic for good reason.
Looper
Bruce Willis goes back in time again in Rian Johnson’s (who recently directed The Creator) action thriller. Time travel is a possibility, but it’s outlawed due to the danger it poses. The mob utilizes the tech by sending their garbage 20 years into the past to be taken care of by assassins called Loopers. All is well in one Looper’s life until the mob sends his future self back to kill him and close his loop.
Get past Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s makeup, this movie has some worthwhile twists and turns.
Tenet
This could be a list comprised of just Christopher Nolan’s filmography, but I’m limiting it to one.
While this is about entropy and inversion more than it is about time travel, I think it fits. Director Christopher Nolan brought in Kip Thorne, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist who worked with the director on Interstellar. Thorne helped create the circles of time inversion, entropy, and annihilation and make sure they were plausible. The story doesn’t stop moving, and it’s challenging. You’ll be thinking about the layers of the story for days after you see it.
What about…?
There are a bunch of popular movies that play with time – dozens of them, franchises even. This list also includes all of the Back to the Future and Bill and Ted and Terminator movies as well. If you dig horrible movies I also suggest Future Zone, Time Cop 2, and Time Under Fire. They’re all pretty spectacular.
