Timecrimes

It's very hard to review "Los cronocrímenes" without spoiling the fun of watching the movie and seeing how the different stories within the main plot outline keep unraveling ever so intelligently. Let's just say that it all starts out with a man watching through his binoculars and spotting something that catches his eye. He follows his curiosity, and that will be the start of some extremely unusual, mysterious, and intriguing events involving this man, a mysterious stalker with his head wrapped in a pink bandage, a naked girl in the woods, and a young scientist.

"Los cronocrímenes" is a terrific movie, one that was made with a low budget, a reduced cast, and very few settings. It combines sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, action, and also sprinkles of comedy -I found myself laughing out loud more than once while watching this. It's a twisted, tragic, cynical sense of humor that I find very fitted to the Spanish way of being and general look on life.

You may enjoy "Los cronocrímenes" for what it is, taking it at face value, and enjoying the twists and turns (and even if you think you've got it figured out, it keeps the ability to surprise you all along). You may also take a deeper look into it. Each viewer sees a different story and message in a movie; for me, personally, besides an extremely entertaining and thoughtful mystery and action movie, "Los cronocrímenes" offers good insight into the human soul, our deepest and darkest motivations for things, and how the line between good and evil is ever so blurry.

It's essentially a rewrite of Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 short story "By His Bootstraps".

Quite often, time-travelling films are too pompeous and full of complex moral dilemmas. This treasure has nothing of a sort. It is, finally, a story about "little man" in unusual circumstances of time travelling. A man, who isn't very bright, who isn't destined to save the world, who isn't parcticularly "good" or "bad". This - this is what I genuinely enjoyed whatching. There's no higher power behind all of this, nor great or malicious power - no, the hero is driven mostly by his own actions, worldview and lack of rationality. Because of that, more interesting things become when he starts falling into the bottomless pit of wrong choices, inevitable circumstances and despair. Hector is very much usual - and that's what makes the story so tense and interesting.

This is a fun movie. It explores time travel in an interesting way, making one big consistent whole. While movies like Primer have more convoluted plots, this one is simpler. It explores the events within timeline in a way that menages to reinterpret them and is an interesting conceptual work. Though somewhat predictable, it still menages to be fun and thought provoking. There are not really any plot holes except that main character acts somewhat in fear of not ruining what he knows happens, at least at first, which is somewhat dubious, but the consistency is preserved. What would happen if he tried to subvert it is not explored, but still, a solid work and an unexplored angle. Less ambitious than Predestination, and at a lower budget, but delivers similar experience if in more low key way, which is sometimes sweeter, in a way small but clever films can be.

The plot of recent Spanish hit "Time Crimes" is fairly simple:Hector 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.The feature length debut of Nacho Vigalondo is a pretty good science-fiction thriller with a sprinkle of horror thrown in.The time machine looks similarly to the contraptions used in 60's time travel sci-fi flicks.The central performance of Karra Elejalde is excellent and his character is sympathetic and believable.Although many of the twists and turns of the story can be guessed quite early on,they are in some ways all the more enjoyable for that and Vigalondo impressively combines thriller,horror,dark comedy and even slapstick elements without making things feel forced.A little bit of nudity provided by beautiful Barbara Goenaga certainly helps!