Ten movies worth putting on play, although they're about fast forwarding and rewinding
Mar 25 '01
The Bottom Line A lot of time-travel movies are junk. But if you like eras-spanning fantasy, these are worth your time.
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The movie version of The Phantom Tollbooth lasts about two hours, but most of the action in it only takes about one half of one minute of what we might call "real" time. When I was in the third-grade, that paradox had me spellbound. And the fascination grew with Dr. Who, which unfortunately always ended in time for The Petula Clark Show to begin on time.
My time travel fantasies were kindled further by Ray Bradbury's classic science fiction story "A Sound of Thunder," which I read for the first time when I was in the fifth-grade:
A man wants to hunt dinosaurs so he goes to a company that will make his dreams come true. The company's staff take every precaution to make sure the man will not change history accidentally. They put a floating path in place so the man will not step foot on the ancient Earth. They target a dinosaur that is just about to die anyway. And they make arrangements to retrieve the bullets so that rust that wasn't supposed to be there doesn't poison a bug or something.
They are very careful. But something goes terribly, terribly wrong.
Bradbury's is a short story, but it fueled a long fascination with the possibilities of going back to the past and jumping ahead to the future. After that I read The Time Machine, the H.G. Wells novel which is credited with creating the time-travel fiction genre. And then A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. And then various other stories and movies as well.
All told, I've probably spent far too much time reading about travelling in time. It all brought me to this moment. In another time, I might think other moves better captured some of the intricacies of mucking about with chronology. But in this time, it's these:
10) Army of Darkness aka Evil Dead 3
1992; writer/director Sam Raimi; star Bruce Campbell
There's goofy fun (and some gore) in this movie that plunks modern-day hero Campbell down in the middle of the Dark Ages. He has to try to find gasoline for his car while dealing with sorcerers, armies of skeletons and all sorts of other 14-century plagues. The tone is very different from the first two Evil Dead movies, which is good for those of us who think those two are vastly overrated.
9) Back to the Future (1985) and Back to the Future Part 3 (1990)
writers Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale; director Zemeckis
This might seem like cheating, but the two complement each other well enough to be counted together. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd go back in time, the first time to make sure Fox's parents meet in the 1950s and the second time to find Lloyd love in the wild, wild West. These movies are amiable fun. If you skip Part Two, you won't miss much.
8) A Connecticut Yankee
1931; writer/director David Butler (based on Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court); stars Will Rogers, Myrna Loy and Maureen O'Sullivan
Rogers shines as the owner of a radio shop who dreams himself back to King Arthur's Camelot. This take on Twain's classic might not exactly be timeless because many of the references to then-current events are dated. But Rogers by himself would make this worth watching and Loy and O'Sullivan brighten things up considerably.
7) Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
1986; writers Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennet; director Leonard Nimoy; stars Nimoy and William Shatner
In the 23rd century, time-travelling whales are going to destroy Earth unless one of their species answers their call. (It's as goofy as it sounds, but amusingly so.) But whales are extinct in the not-so-distant future, so the crew of the starship Enterprise come back to present-day California to abduct a whale they need to communicate with the futuristic whales. Understanding much of the movie's humor is easier if you've followed the television series on which this movie series is based, but the story is intriguing enough that you can probably enjoy it even if you don't get all the in-jokes. How hard can it be? This is Star Trek, not rocket science.
6) Planet of the Apes
1968; writers Rod Serling and Michael G. Wilson (based on Pierre Boulle's novel Monkey Planet); director Franklin J. Schaffner; star Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston is an astronaut who accidentally travels into the future and lands on a planet where human beings are mute and various kinds of monkeys have enslaved them. This entertaining movie, which inspired four big-screen sequels and two television series, has one of the most famous endings in screen history. Perhaps the best of the sequels is Escape from the Planet of the Apes, in which simians played by Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter travel back to present-day Earth, where they are the persecuted ones.
5) Pleasantville
1998; writer/director Gary Ross; stars Reese Witherspoon and Toby Maguire
A malfunctioning television zaps brother and sister back to the 1950s, where they live in the world of a classic television show they know from repeats. The out-of-time siblings literally bring a little color to a world that prizes conformity above all else. Joan Allen is captivating as always, this time as the TV mom who discovers there is more to life than doing housework while wearing dresses and pearls.
4) The Time Machine
1960; based on the novel by H.G. Wells; director George Pal; star Rod Taylor (The Birds)
The movie lacks some of the subtlety and sophistication of Wells' novel, but it's still great fun. Taylor is a scientist at the end of the 19th century who invents a machine that takes him to various times in humanity's future. The creators of the special effects won an Academy Award, and their work is capable of impressing audiences accustomed to more elaborate displays.
3 & 2) Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
writer/director James Cameron; star Arnold Schwarzenegger
These movies are why people put up with Cameron and Schwarzenegger. In both of them, Arnold is a robot who comes back from a future in which Earth is dominated by robots. In the first, he's the villain and his goal is to kill the woman who will give birth to humanity's savior. He fails. In the second, he's the good guy who comes back to protect that child from another, more advanced robot that has been sent back to finish the job that Arnold's first Terminator couldn't. The special effects are impressive, especially in T2, and both movies have a kind of respect for what could be called the "logic" of time-travel.
1) Time After Time
1979; writer/director Nicholas Meyer; stars Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen
H.G. Wells has created a time machine and Jack the Ripper has stolen it to jump forward to today. Some of the story doesn't make sense, but if you buy the far-fetched premise (not just of this movie but of all time-travel stories) you'll enjoy a lot of fanciful fun. McDowell is charming and intense as Wells and Steenburgen radiates old-fashioned movie star charisma as the modern woman he loves.
These are so good, you might want to see them . . . time and again.
Also, Peggy Sue Got Married starring Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage sounds from Prepoia's review that it is worth seeing. http://www.epinions.com/content_13779635844
I've left 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's and Arthur C. Clarke's dazzling collaboration, off the list. It's an intriguing landmark movie, but it's not clear that what happens in it is time-travelling. I'd be interested in reading a list that includes it, if anyone wants to take the time.
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Member: Peter William Warn
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