Mixed tape movies: Time travel without time machines

In the eighties it was the-thing-to-do to make a mixed tape (like an mp3 but touchable, always in need of a pencil and definitely cooler). On it you would make a little playlist of all the cool songs. Now the trick was to make each song correspond with the rest of the tape. In this post I will try to do the same with movies.

Every once in a while I will select a general topic and select movies to accompany it. As you can see the more child-friendly movies are at the start of the day, but  when night falls: ‘here be monsters’. Please feel free to give suggestions of other unknown movies.

One rule though: Auteur themes like ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘James Bond’ are not allowed. ‘Spy-movies’, naturally, are.

Theme: Time travel without time machines.

Now I wanted to focus on time travel without a time machine. There is a fine art in designing a time machine but sometime merely jumping into a lake is enough to make it happen. This has the additional benefit of our ‘hero’ literally accidentally traveling through time with all the consequences that follow. So here are several noteworthy time travel movies. 

08:00-10:00

Catweazle: Let’s start with a couple of episodes of mr. Electrickery. Catweazle the (not-so) wise tries to escape the angry mob and jumps into a lake only to find himself in the future. This character is hilarious for all ages. Even if the seventies are –thank God- long behind us.

10:00-12:00 

The Navigator - A medieval odyssey: A nice little Australian movie about some monks trying to find their promised land through history. It is a bit too dark for a children’s movie but, then again, I’m sure most kids can handle that.

12:00-14:00

Just visiting: A classic fish out of water comedy. It’s hilarious but, unfortunately, not very noteworthy. It’s the ultimate relax after a hard day’s work movie. Then why did I include it? Because every list gets better with Jean Reno and (in this version) Christina Applegate.

14:00-16:00 
Groundhog day: Waking up each day on the same day until you learn your way.

According to calculations a mere 2500 years (link).

Bill Murray undergoes this ordeal in one of the last movies that actually dared to make fun of suicide. Groundhog day is a great movie, a modern classic that has put Punxsutawney on the world map. Or, at least…we know it exists.

16:00-17:00 
Edge of Tomorrow: The action version of Groundhog day. An underappreciated gem in the Tom Cruise portofolio. Truly this is one of his better movies of the last few year. Tom Cruise plays somewhat of a coward (at least for the start of the movie before he ‘evolves’ into classic Tom Cruise) who accidentally swallows some alien goo that makes him relive a day time and again. A power he then uses to destroy the aliens.

17:00-19:00 
Frequency: Can the past be changed? That’s what Frequency explores in a wonderfully solid script. Truly there isn’t a word out of place that would unbalance this movie.

Well, maybe two: “remember yahoo.”

A detective discovers that he can talk to his long-dead father through time through  a ham radio. But by saving his father he also saves a highly dangerous serial killer. The game is on, depending on the frequency.

19:00-21:00 
12:01: The dark version of Groundhog day. Now a man wakes up on the same day every day to prevent a murder from happening. This is a movie that gets a bit dragged down by the ending (it’s not the perfect ending you hoped for). But ‘till then you have a great movie set before you. Especially Robin Bartlett is brilliant as the ‘boss you love to hate’.

21:00-23:00 
The butterfly effect: Timetravel through reading this time 'round. This is a strange movie for me because the original version I saw had a vastly different ending than the one later released for television. If you own the DVD you can choose to let it end happy or sad. I’m a romantic at heart; I prefer happy.

23:00-01:00 
Donnie Darko: This movie had a brilliant website attached to it that I actually frequented even though I had seen the movie to bits. The whole movie is, pretty much, a train of thought with some philosophy thrown into it. Yes it is a strange tale but oh so brilliantly provocatively intriguing. 

01:00-03:00 
Triangle: One of my all-time favorites.

I didn’t make my schema for nothing link.

A time travel tale that deals with ‘growth’, ‘remorse’ and some cold blooded murder all set on a spooky ship called the Aeolus. Go aboard and have a hell of a time.

Honorable mentions: 

Dark: The German Netflix series Dark has a nice take on time travel. I you want to spent a few hours in the bleak unforgiving town of Winden yhen this is it (and yes I do mean bleak).

Forever young: This isn’t really a time travel movie but rather a person from the past in a wrong time. Mel Gibson is said person and his bond with Elijah ‘Frodo’ Wood is a wonderful friendship to behold. 

Blast from the past: Like Gibson above Brendan Frasier is the ‘odd one out’ here. But this movie is completely stolen by the brilliant Christopher Walken who manages to play paranoia into the extreme.