The great thing about watching a time-travel movie is that you can fast-forward or rewind it just like the characters in the films you're watching. Now, while you're waiting for the next great, time-bending adventure like, say, the upcoming Doctor Strange to appear in the theatres, you can sit back and relax and chill at home along with potato chips right from the comfort of your couch with Catchplay's slate of wonderful time-travelling films. Have fun. You have all the time in the world to enjoy these.
IT'S A FAMILY THING
About Time (2013)
At the age of 21, Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson), who lives in the seaside county of Cornwall, England, is told by his father (Bill Nighy) of the amazing secret that the men of his family can travel through time. Feeling unlucky in love, Tim uses his newfound power to travel back in time to change previous events to make one girl, Charlotte (Margot Robbie), fall in love with him but ends up finding another truer one, Mary (Rachel McAdams), instead. He also discovers that tampering with time has unexpected consequences. Catch this comfy, romantic comedy-drama for its two lovely ladies, both now hot in superhero movies – McAdams in the upcoming Doctor Strange and Robbie stealing the show as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.
Tidbit
Three Harry Potter co-stars appear here – Gleeson (Bill Weasley), Nighy (Rufus Scrimgeour) and the late Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dursley) in his final film.
TO DO THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL HE GETS IT RIGHT
Source Code (2011)
Technically more a sci-fi thriller than a time-travel story, this film is exciting due to the number of times Jake Gyllenhaal is put through the same gripping, tension-packed grinder to reverse and avert a major disaster. He plays a comatose US army pilot, Captain Colter Stevens, who - hooked up in a neuro-sensitive pod chamber - is sent to relive the final eight minutes onboard a train again and again before it is destroyed by a massive bomb. Each time he is placed in another man's consciousness to try to expose the unidentified bomber, a deadly mission which requires him to get blown up again and again. This instant-replay deja-vu concept is also featured prominently in Bill Murray's comedy classic Groundhog Day and Tom Cruise's sci-fi actioner Edge Of Tomorrow (2014).
Tidbit
Scott Bakula (TV's NCIS: New Orleans) has a voice cameo as Gyllenhaal's father. Bakula is best known for Quantum Leap (1989 – 1993), one of the most famous time-travelling series on TV.
TO UNCOMFORTABLY KILL HIS OLDER SELF
Looper (2012)
One of the best and cleverest - but somewhat confusing - time-travelling thrillers in recent years. In 2074, criminal mobs send people they want terminated 30 years back in time to be killed by hired assassins called “loopers”. In 2044, one such looper named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is sent a target who turns out to be his 30-year-older self (played by Bruce Willis). Old Joe escapes and sets off an alternate timeline where Young Joe finds himself protecting a woman (Emily Blunt) and her gifted, but targeted, young son from Old Joe and other killers who are out to kill Young Joe. This entertaining, cerebral film is now considered a cult classic by time-travel fans.
Tidbit
At the risk of seriously disrupting the space-time continuum, Willis has a habit of meeting his younger self with the two other movies being Twelve Monkeys (1995) and The Kid (2000).
TO MEET THE WOMAN HE LOVES
Somewhere in Time (1980)
This time-travel drama came right after the late Christopher Reeve starred as Superman (1978) and it is his most touching and hauntingly romantic film which is guaranteed to move hearts and make one fall in love. Reeve is Richard Collier, a playwright who in 1980 chances upon a decades-old 1912 photograph of a beautiful, mysterious woman, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), at a picturesque, historic hotel. He is so totally mesmerised by and infatuated with this beauteous picture that he uses self-hypnosis to will himself back to 1912 to meet his dream girl. Made at one of America's loveliest landmark hotels, the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, romantics rate this as a cult favourite, and its original movie poster is a rare collector's item now.
Tidbit
Seymour got the role of Elise, the highly coveted woman, when, unlike all the other contending actresses who were asked whether they had ever fallen madly in love before, she answered “No”.
TO DRIVE A COOL CAR INTO THE PAST AND MAKE SURE HIS DAD MEETS HIS MOM
Back to the Future (1985), Back To The Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
The greatest time-travel trilogy ever made with the first pic, Part I, being quite possibly the best time-travel movie ever. Absolute fun, cleverly funny and superbly cast with Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and so on, this trio of very entertaining comedies is always on the list of moviegoer's top-five time-travel flicks. The second episode zips into the future, the third one goes back into cowboy times. But it is the first BTTF which has fans claiming to this day that it's the most perfect time-travel film in cinema history. Fox is pitch-perfect as Marty McFly, the quick-thinking rascal who zooms in a time-machine car from 1985 to the 1955 of his parents' crucial school-dance year. Despite many comical obstacles, he must make sure they end up together or he will cease to exist. This is iconic cinema at its finest and most enjoyable.
Tidbit
Instead of “Back to the Future ”, one of the catchiest titles in movies, the original hit flick was almost named “Spaceman From Pluto”.
