Timecrimes (2007)

January 6, 2022 1:16 PM

in Nacho Vigalondo's time-travel thriller, a man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.

89% fresh, 79% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. 68% on Metacritic.

The late Roger Ebert said:

Timecrimes is like a temporal chess game with nudity, voyeurism and violence, which makes it more boring than most chess games but less boring than a lot of movies.

Currently streaming in the US free with ads via Tubi or Pluto TV, without ads via subscription on AMC+, or via digital rental in the usual places.

Bonus content!

Nacho Vigalondo short films:
7:35 in the Morning
Sunday
Code 7
August Moon
The One in Charge (writer only)

posted by DirtyOldTown (16 comments total)

This with Triangle is a perfect double feature.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:38 PM on January 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

It's Triangle plus Hitchcock, and I love every minute of it.

(thanks, iamkimiam, for the double feature recco!)
posted by kandinski at 3:11 PM on January 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I saw this a few years ago on my quest to watch every time travel movie and hated the rash, genre-blind, misogynist, self-destructive protagonist. The movie itself was enjoyable-ish but I wouldn't want to rewatch it without friends to riff on it.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 12:06 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

This and Triangle really do just obliterate the whole timeloop idea. I remember this movie as not exactly pleasant, but as the best it was possible to be at whatever it was doing.
posted by fleacircus at 9:44 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

While most time loop stories abide by the "you can't change the past" principle, this is the only one I've seen that uses "you can't change what the past looks like," which I enjoyed. The protagonist is awful, though.

Also glad to see other people appreciating Triangle, the absolute greatest time loop movie ever.
posted by Sibrax at 10:21 AM on January 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Both this and Triangle are great. If you're in the mood for more time looping, there's a 1993 movie called 12:01 with Jonathan Silverman and Martin Landau. It's a bit made-for-TV quality, but still pretty entertaining.

It doesn't involve a loop, but 2014's Time Lapse is also pretty good--it involves a group of friends who discover a machine that takes pictures of things 24 hours into the future.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:11 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm a big fan of this one and Triangle is a good shout for a double bill. Both are very dark movies.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:07 AM on January 8, 2022

I liked this movie a bit more than a lot of commenters. Yes, the protagonist does some shitty things, but he seems to have no choice in them. It's about a guy just hanging out in his back yard when time travel comes along and just starts fucking with him like it's a fairy who's found a new toy and wants to play.

You have to do these things.
Why?
Because the future version of you did them once he went back in time.
Well, why the hell did he do those things?
Because the future version of him did those things once he went back in time.

There's no point at which a version of the protagonist made these choices out of the clear blue sky and started all this. It's time travel all the way down.
posted by Naberius at 9:36 AM on January 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh! Let me add that, in trying to figure out what Triangle was, I fell down a rabbit hole which ended up with me discovering and getting an account on Kanopy, which provides free streaming films through participating universities and libraries, and which also has BOTH Timecrimes and Triangle. I am a happy camper!
posted by Naberius at 12:40 PM on January 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

For double feature fun, here's a link to Triangle.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:08 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

No one has mentioned Primer yet, but it is a worthy stop down this particular rabbit hole.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:21 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

It’s been awhile since I watched this, but I think the terrible protagonist is the whole point. He’s a “regular guy” who has an extraordinary experience that makes all his passive sexism, violence, and entitlement utterly manifest. I’m not sure the director thought that far, mind you; I suspect he was going for a “the Joker started with one bad day” vibe, but I do think the movie works as an indictment of “regular guys.” I think it’s a horror film with SF trappings.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:58 AM on January 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Nacho Vigalondo regularly uses a male protagonist who seems to be set up as sympathetic but turns out to be an irredeemable creep. It might even be the defining theme of his work. It's most definitely intentional.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:33 AM on January 9, 2022 [5 favorites]

OK, I think this is the only one of his films I’ve seen, so that’s helpful info.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:36 AM on January 9, 2022

You can see this a bit even in some of the short films linked above, like "7:35 in the Morning" and "Sunday." His male protagonists are often assholes, creeps, or lunatics, but in a way that indicts or mocks them, rather than celebrates them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:43 AM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I didn't realize he was the writer/director of Colossal too, yeah lol. Maybe Vigalando can do an epsiode of Ted Lasso.
posted by fleacircus at 10:13 AM on January 10, 2022