Time travel is still travel, right?
1. Back to the Future (1985)
Is Back to the Future the ultimate commercial time travel movie? Very possibly. Forget the trilogy, if you’re short on time, the first and original Robert Zemeckis written and directed Back to the Future is the one to focus on. It features not only a crazy-haired Christopher Lloyd as the inventor of the “flux capacitor” that enables journeying through time but also a skateboardingly cool Michael J. Fox as the now iconic “Marty McFly” who accidentally travels back in time and threatens his own existence by making his mum fall in love with him. Honestly, it’s not as creepy as it sounds. This film captured the imagination of a generation when it was released in 1985, tapping into the 80s does 50s craze. It is well worth a re-watch today. And if you haven’t seen it already, where have you been? 1955?
2. The Adam Project (2022)
An entertaining tale with amusing references to other time travel films, such as Back to the Future and Terminator, The Adam Project is a (mostly) family friendly film starring everyone’s favourite, Ryan Reynolds, and the sometimes under-rated Jennifer Garner, as his mum. Yes, you read that right. A grown-up Reynolds aka Adam Reed, travels back in time to meet his younger self and save the universe from … well, the evils of time travel. With a surprisingly moving turn from Mark Ruffalo and an extraordinary performance by debut actor Walker Scobel as a young Reynolds, this is a coming-of-age buddy movie with a difference. Watch it now, because it’s later than you think.
3. The Terminator Trilogy (1984)
This is one where the full franchise is worth viewing. The theme tune by Guns and Roses still sends shivers up my spine. Co-written and directed by Hollywood royalty, James Cameron, it tells the tale of various killer robots sent back in time from an apocalyptic future where tech is destroying humanity, to try to eliminate or save (depending on their programming) the mother of the future leader of the human resistance. An awe-inspiring performance by Linda Hamilton helps to make Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg a bit less wooden – indeed, by the saga’s end you might just shed a few tears for him.
4. Planet of the Apes (1968)
This film might contain the grandaddy of all stomach-lurching plot twists, so I’ll try not to say too much here, but the original Planet of the Apes is a classic, in which astronauts land on an uncivilised planet ruled by primates and where cruelty and lack of empathy towards others reign.
5. The Time Traveller’s Wife (2009)
Really I’m including this film because of my love for the book, the debut novel by Audrey Niffenegger. A love story between Henry, who has a genetic disorder that causes him to travel back and forth in time to key emotional events in his own life, and Clare, his artist wife, played by the eminently watchable Rachel McAdams. I’m not sure the film does the book justice, as to my mind it misses out a crucial final scene that changes the emotional tenor of the whole story.
6. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
A hilarious romp through time by two teenagers who are duffing their history class and must ace the next presentation to avoid being sent to military school. Presented with a time machine and a mission statement by their future selves, they must collect a bunch of historical figures to help them, so that they may perhaps, eventually, save the universe with the power of their rock and roll music. A stream of timeless Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter exclamations (“Bogus!” and “Yes, way!”) and absurd encounters disguise a brilliantly conceived plot and some complex themes. Very silly and “excellent!”
7. The Age of Adaline (2015)
It’s arguable that this is not a time travel movie, but I’m prepared to make the case. Adaline Bowman, born on New Year’s Day 1908, lives most of her life without aging, due to a terrible accident she suffered at the age of 29. She experiences all the great events of the 20th century and the rites of passage of her own life, such as the growing up and aging of her own daughter, all as a 29-year-old performed by the impossibly beautiful Blake Lively. A cautionary tale about wishing for eternal youth, the film does not go much further than skin-deep if we’re honest, but contains some nice touches, such as the way the ever-youthful Adaline speaks to her pet perhaps like an old lady would, and exhibits wisdom and prescience in conversation with others, just like the best of grandmas. And don’t miss the touching cameo by Han Solo, sorry, Harrison Ford.
8. Looper (2012)
A mafia time travel movie? Yes, please. When you’re in the mob, you know how they operate, how they behave when they need to eliminate someone. And you pick up on all the signs when it’s your turn to leave the family wearing a pair of concrete shoes. In this take, hitman Joe does not await his victims in some chilly warehouse in Chicago. He waits for them to be sent back in time by the bosses, and that’s where he does the dirty deed. Until one day, his own future self appears before him for assassination.
9. Inception (2010)
I know. I know. Surely Interstellar should be the time travel offering from Christopher Nolan on this list? But no. For me, the only one is Inception. A gang of professional corporate thieves are able to use dream-sharing technology to enter their marks’ consciousnesses, to implant or extract information. They are even able to go several layers deep, inside shared dreamworlds, but there’s a catch. Time on each layer runs slower than the last, and there’s a danger of “entering Limbo” – a world of infinite subconscious – if things go wrong. The gang leader once spent 50 years in Limbo with his wife while experimenting with the tech, and let’s just say, it didn’t end well.
This may be as convoluted as a Nolan filmworld can get, but standout performances from Leonardo di Caprio and Marion Cotillard, as well as the lush, matrix-like cinematography, make it well worth viewing as many times as it takes for it to make sense.
10. Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Talking of cinematography, this Cannes winner by George Roy Hill, adapting Kurt Vonnegut’s revered novel, “makes shrewd use of verbal and sonic cues to show how middle-aged optometrist Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is randomly buffeted by memory and fate”, according to the British Film Institute. Tragedy and terror when he revisits an abattoir in Dresden where he hid from the 1945 allied bombardment, give way to complete surrealism, when Billy is abducted by aliens and put in a zoo. An impressively faithful adaptation that reminds us that cinema itself is a time machine.
