Film
www.list.co.uk/film
HE BOLDLY GOES WHEREVER HE DAMN WELL LIKES Hitlist THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES*
✽✽ Mid-August Lunch Gommorah writer Gianni Di Gregorio’s directorial debut is a gem about aging and the power of community. See review, opposite and profile, page 26. Filmhouse, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 14 Aug. ✽✽ Sin Nombre Powerful Sundance Film Festival award- winning Mexican immigrant drama. See feature, page 12 and Also Released, opposite. Cameo, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 14 Aug. ✽✽ The Dollars Trilogy Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti westerns shown over three consecutive nights paves the way for the re-release of his seminal Once Upon A Time in The West. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Tue 18–Thu 20 Aug. ✽✽ Le Mepris Jean-Luc Godard’s finest film screens as part of Truffaut/Godard season. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Mon 18 Aug. ✽✽ Mesrine: Killer Instinct First of a two-part epic based on the real and made up life of French bank robber Jacques Mesrine. Out now on selected release. ✽✽ AntiChrist The Enchanted Forest, Lars Von Trier-style. Out now, selected release. ✽✽ Coco Before Chanel Amélie gets some new frocks. Out now on general release. ✽✽ Bruno ‘So . . . if they are nice they are gay, right?’ Out now on general release. ✽✽ Viva Anne Biller’s brilliant Russ Meyer pastiche. Needs to be seen to be believed. See review, page 31. Out now (Nouveaux Pictures). ✽✽ The Fireman’s Ball Czech New Waver Milos Forman’s delightful, long banned in it’s homeland comedy gets a decent transfer onto DVD. See review, page 31. Out Mon 17 Aug (Arrow).
Weird science The Time Traveler’s Wife (pictured) is the latest film to play the time warp. Miles Fielder traces a venerable movie history
C inema has a long and impressive record of making films that turn on chronological catastrophe. Perhaps that’s because the medium is narrative-based and time warps create plot twists that transform otherwise routine storylines into ones that are enjoyably perplexing and reach satisfyingly smart conclusions.
The 1949 version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, featuring Bing Crosby’s 20th century mechanic crooning to the owner of Excalibur, is, arguably, the earliest significant time warp film. Nevertheless, a good place to start a loosely chronological survey of the best of them is the 1960 adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine (and not the underwhelming 2002 version made by the author’s great-grandson, Simon). Rod Taylor’s trip to the end of history, in that great Victorian throne, remains the genre classic by which all new entries are tested. In direct homage to it Time After Time (1978) features Malcolm McDowell stepping into Taylor’s slippers to play a Herbert Wells in pursuit of Jack the Ripper after the serial killer steals his machine and absconds into the future. Somewhere in Time (1980) reverses that trajectory to have Christopher Reeve hypnotise himself into returning to the Edwardian era in order to realise his impossible love for a woman in an old oil painting (well it was Jane Seymour). But timewarp romances take the back seat to action-oriented ones, as the phenomenal popularity of 1984’s Terminator proved. The Back to the Future trilogy (beginning in 1985) ultimately suffered the same fate, but the crazy-o time
22 THE LIST 13–20 Aug 2009
twists of the first two instalments made memorable what would otherwise have been a pedestrian teen comedy. Sticking to comedy, three films from 1993 generated a lot of laughs: curmudgeonly Bill Murray living the worst day of his life over and over in Groundhog Day, Jean Reno’s 11th century knight having trouble with 20th century plumbing in Les Visiteurs, and Bruce Campbell’s zombie-slayer showing off his shotgun in 1300AD in Army of Darkness (originally, brilliantly, titled The Medieval Dead).
Terry Gilliam’s Pythonesque sense of the ridiculous dovetailed nicely with the inherent absurdity of the time warp in 12 Monkeys (his 1995 remodelling of the apocalyptic 1962 French short La Jetee), which was something he’d already established with Time Bandits (1980). And Richard Kelly also made the genre his own with the instant cult hit Donnie Darko (2001). Like that film, the Spanish comedy Timecrimes (2007) transposed weird science to suburbia in a cross between The Time Machine and an episode of The Simpsons. And most recently crafty JJ Abrams warped time to create an alternative (fictional) reality and thus give himself card blanche to boldly go wherever he damn well wants to with his Star Trek franchise reboot.
So here’s to filmmakers taking a leaf from the Danish prince’s book and seeing time stays well and truly out of joint.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is on general release from Fri 14 Aug. See Also Released, opposite.