The time travel thriller is no easy nut to crack. On the one hand, you can’t entirely ignore the 
logical and physical conundrum of what would happen if one person traveled back to a time and place he had already existed. On the other hand, if you try too hard to come up with a viable explanation for the theoretical, you end up with something impenetrably dense like Primer (an impressive film, nonetheless). With Timecrimes, writer/director Nacho Vigalondo get the balance right, creating a truly engaging (and scary) time travel story which not only makes sense on the logical surface (all an audience really needs) but pokes fun at how impossible it would be for human beings to have such an enormous power over time.
The story is best left unexplained, but for starters, a man named Héctor witnesses strange things happening in the woods next door to his new home, and quickly upon investigation, finds himself on the run from a horrifying figure who seems determined to harm him. Add to this the fact that one of his rural neighbors is a lab which has developed a time machine, and things go from bad to worse for Héctor. Aside from having the right measure of time theory, the film manages to maintain its tense energy without overdoing the horror. As the closing credits rolled, my wife acutely observed, “Someone’s going to try to make an English language version of this film and they’ll completely mess it up.” Sure enough, IMDB reports the adaptation as being slated for 2011. Do yourself and favor and see this one now instead.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet... Leave one in the space below.
Leave a Comment