Older Reviews

TIMECRIMES (2007)

If you share my love of time travel stories, take time to see this Spanish mystery-thriller. Relaxing in his back yard, Héctor spies a topless woman in the woods. Investigating, he finds her now lying dead on the ground. Suddenly, a man pops with a bandaged face pops out of the bushes and stabs him in the arm with a pair of scissors, then starts chasing him. Héctor flees to a nearby building where a mysterious technician (writer/director Nacho Vigalondo) hides him in metal vault-like contraption. Moments later, Héctor emerges to find himself now in the recent past and, from the front of the hillt building, sees his house, wife and himself in the distance. The scientist explains that as a result of unauthorized time travel experiments he's conducting, Héctor is observing his "mirror image" from the day before. From then on (or from then back, as the case may be), events go horribly awry as the increasingly discombobulated time traveler tries set things right. Is he successful? Wish I could say, but after two enjoyable viewings, I’m still confused. This version (with has hard-to-read yellow subtitles) is being remade, with David Cronenberg directing. But don’t wait – catch the Spanish version now on Netflix. More