Best & Worst Time Travel Movies: Now Disc. Best: 12 Monkeys (1995)

From TWOP:

"Jake's on a Train! That's what they should have called Source Code, a sci-fi thriller about soldier Jake Gyllenhaal repeatedly time-jumping into the past to stop a bomb from destroying a passenger train. The premise seems familiar, but only because there are as many time travel films as Gyllenhaal has ex-girlfriends, and they start to cover similar territory after a while. Here are some of the standouts of the genre, including those we'd love to go back and watch for the first time, as well as those we'd gladly let perish in a railway disaster. -- Zach Oat"

"Best: The Back to the Future Trilogy (1985-90)
A touchstone of American cinema, the first film could certainly be called out as the best, but all three films in this epically comic trilogy are time-travel classics in their own right. The first installment taught us about paradoxes, the second taught us about alternate realities, and the third taught us... well, pretty much the same thing as the first one, except in the Wild West."

 

Worst: The Butterfly Effect (2004)

"Are you supposed to root for the protagonist to fail? Because it's never a good sign when the hero of a movie goes back in time to fix his past, and you find yourself praying he messes up his future even more. Ashton Kutcher getting nosebleeds, Ashton Kutcher in jail, Ashton Kutcher missing limbs... it's all good in the 'hood."

 

I think The Butterfly Effect gets a bad rap. Yes, it has Ashton Kutcher and it may not have the most coherent story, but it sure does have some damn cool ideas, especially the idea of the "mature" Ashton's soul occupying his child-self during his "blackout" moments from his childhood. The scene where he verbally assaults the child porn director is particularly memorable.

 

I waited awhile to see the Butterfly Effect. It just didn't appeal to me. I was surprised when I saw it, it was actually pretty good and I was surprised that Ashton Kutcher was not that bad an actor in it. Even if it's not the best, it's definitely not "the worst" time travel movie.

 

It was the first serious Kutcher movie I've seen, though IIRC we get to see a bit of his 70s show character in the frat boy timeline. In the original ending, I wonder if he wrote a new journal entry on the day he and Amy Smart bumped into each other. This would set up a potential Groundhog Day scenario if he ever chose to date her.

 

I think had Butterfly Effect starred just about any other actor in the entire world, it would have a better reputation then it does. But the well deserved hate that Ashton Kutcher inspires keeps people from giving the movie a chance. It isn't a bad movie and it's one of the few times where Kutcher actually tries to act.

 

Best: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

"You have to admit that the original Star Trek cast was made for comedy. The banter between drama queen Kirk and cold fish Spock, the accents of Chekov and Scotty, the cranky bluster of McCoy... Even their best dramatic moments worked because they were counterbalanced with great laughs. So you have to recognize the genius of sending the entire crew back to 1986 to kidnap two humpback whales, allowing Spock to be more Vulcan than normal and leaving everyone else to stumble blindly through primitive San Francisco. Star Trek: First Contact isn't bad, either, but it lacks "nuclear wessels."

 

Definitely one of the best time travel movies ever, and certainly the best "old school" Star Trek movie.

 

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Double dumbass on you!

 

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We are looking for the nuclear wessels.

 

Worst: The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

"If we were supposed to find a touching romance in the story of a man who conditions his wife from a young age to fall in love with him, then is a repeatedly absent-from-the-timestream father, then we seem to have missed something."

 

I actually liked this one.

 

As did I. I would hardly say he "conditioned" her to fall in love with him though. I only saw it once but from what I remember he seems to turn down her advances until after she's an adult and they meet for "real".

 

Making him far less creepy than some people on the internet.

 

Best: Army of Darkness (1992)

"Bruce Campbell's Ash never seemed like the brightest candle in the cabin in the first two Evil Dead films, but compared to the primitive screwheads of the Middle Ages, he's Albert Einstein. Which is why this goofy third chapter is so damn funny, as Ash, worshipped as a boomstick-toting god, fights to defeat his evil Deadite doppelganger, wrestle the Necronomicon into submission and return to the present."

 

This.... is my boomstick!


Comedy gold.

 

Worst: Black Knight (2001)

"You know a movie is in trouble when it's clear that they came up with the title first, then built a movie around it: "What if the Black Knight was actually Black?" Sending Martin Lawrence to Medieval times is funny for about 15 minutes, but after that it's just a waste of Tom Wilkinson."

 

I doubt it's funny for anywhere near that long, actually.

 

Best: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

"Two idiots walk into a time machine, and the laws of time travel are thrown out the window, but somehow it's all okay. Watching a more proactive Beavis and Butt-head kidnap history's greatest minds and make mental notes to alter the present in the future as they fight to pass history and become the saviors of mankind is, if you can tolerate all the dudespeak, non-non-non-non-non-heinous."

 

EXCELLENT!!

 

And there's another sequel coming!

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Best: Somewhere in Time (1980)

"Christopher Reeve turned back time as Superman in the 1978 movie by flying around the Earth, but here he just needs to concentrate and he's back in 1912, thanks to the power of hypnosis. The science is... well, nonexistent, but the love story between a turn-of-the-century actress and a Me Decade playwright is stirring, and occasionally tearjerking."

 

I've read the novel Bid Time Return, it's very touching. He uses a form of self-hypnosis.

Though it's unsure whether he really travelled in time or they were the hallucinations caused by a terminal brain tumour.

I think the film has a happy ending.

 

Let me start off by saying that Somewhere in Time is a movie that I have a fond weakness for- certainly a guilty pleasure. It's one of those movies that whenever it's on, no matter what section is playing, I stop and watch and never get tired of for some reason. As imperfect as it sounds, I think the pairing of Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour works perfectly. It's probably the most innocent movie in the history of movies. And John Barry's score is great as well.

Not having read the book, the movie certainly locks in the notion that he actually travelled through time. And I don't know how his brain tumor death was handled in the book, but I don't mind the happy "physical death through heartbreak" ending, where their spirits reunite, presumably by using the same mental power that he used to travel through time...