BEFORE: OK, so this was going to be a slot for "Glass Onion", with Edward Norton carrying over - you won't SEE him in "Kingdom of Heaven", because his face is almost completely covered the whole time, but my sources are telling me he's there, for sure. (I kid, his performance in that film got rave reviews, because he had to do it all with his voice, and prior to that, he'd been in a weird mix of films, like "The People vs. Larry Flynt", "Keeping the Faith" and "Death to Smoochy", so who knew he could ACT? Well, anybody who saw "Primal Fear", that's who...)
But then last night as I was cross-referencing and re-color coding my movie list (actors with no other appearances are in plain black, ones with other appearances somewhere on the list are blue, ones with ADJACENT appearances are in red, and ones I need to pay special attention to are in green) I saw that "Kingdom of Heaven" also linked to this film on my sub-list of time travel movies - and when I spotted Leslie Odom's name in the credits, I realized that "Needle in a Timestack" ALSO linked to "Glass Onion", so I could drop this one right into the chain between two scheduled movies, and just progress from there.
Problem is, January is already overcrowded, with 32 films on the docket, and only 31 days. Adding this one would make 33, which is do-able considering all the down time I seem to have, but we're driving up to see my parents next weekend, so it would be problematic. But those 10 time travel movies are just sitting there, with no concrete plans to link to them - they are tough to get to, so when I see a chance, I should probably take it. OK, then, well, I have to drop something, and the most likely candidate is "The Weight of Water", which is on Hulu or Tubi and was going to link "Flag Day" and "Licorice Pizza", but it's the middle film in a Sean Penn trio, so I could drop it. It's not a high priority film for me - but then, I checked out the BLUE names in that cast (remember, those actors are also in at least one other film, somewhere on the list) and I realized that "The Weight of Water" links to "Belfast" via Ciaran Hinds. "Belfast" is scheduled for St. Patrick's Day, and I had not programmed 2023 beyond that point. What's funny is that "Belfast" doesn't link to much, so if I move that Sean Penn film after "Belfast", suddenly I have a bunch more options - OK, so that settles it, time travel film tonight, then "The Weight of Water" gets moved to March, and I pre-solved a problem that I didn't even know I had!
Orlando Bloom carries over from "Kingdom of Heaven". "Glass Onion" tomorrow.
THE PLOT: Nick and Janine live in marital bliss until Janine's ex-husband warps time to try to tear them apart. As Nick's memories disappear, he must decide what he's willing to sacrifice in order to hold on to - or let go of - everything he loves.
AFTER: Now that I think about it, Movie #4-3-2-1 really should have been about space travel, not time travel, but whatever. I should make it a priority to try to get to some more time travel films, they've been hanging around on my list for far too long. I managed to get to SEVEN movies that were all or partially about time travel last year, so I shouldn't be too hard on myself - but I'm counting "Lightyear" (which was really space travel, though a sort of hyper-fast travel that moved Buzz ahead in time), "Don't Let Go" (which was just communication between two times, not actual travel) and "Last Night in Soho" (where the time travel was unexplained, possibly just imagined).
But "Needle in a Timestack" concerns actual time travel, it's set in the near future where some damn fool invented a time machine, and instead of changing history for the betterment of all, by, say, undoing the Holocaust or preventing climate change before the tipping point, formed a company that charges rich people an arm and a leg to go back in time and make THEIR lives better in some way. Yeah, that sounds about right. The rich get richer and the poor get stuck in a time shift. What, you think Bill Gates or Elon Musk got that way through hard work and determination? Most likely they paid to go back in time and invented something that they already knew about in the future, and then they just did it first and got all the credit.
If you apply that same set of reasoning to relationships, you get "Needle in a Timestack". NIck and Janine are happily married, but every time there's a time shift, something seems a little different in their lives - but after an hour or so, their brains catch up and they no longer seem to mind that they used to own a dog, but now they have a cat. Nick, however, starts to suspect that Janine's rich ex-husband, Tommy, is monkeying with the timestream to split them up, because he wants her back. This is apparently a common thing in the future, after a reality wave hits, people pick up their phones to check in, to find out if they're still married or if their hamster is now an iguana.
It seems that Janine left Tommy to be with Nick - and Nick and Tommy used to be friends, but hmm, no longer. Either Nick's paranoid, or someone's really out to get him, there's no way to know because everyone's memories also roll with the changes after each shift - it makes sense, if you change a point in time, you also change everything that happened after it, that's the butterfly effect. I know, whether it would work this way or not is largely theoretical. But thank God that there's a rigorous questionnaire to fill out before anyone is allowed to time travel, they need to make sure that nobody's going to accidentally create a paradox, like killing their own grandfather or inventing time travel before the guy who actually did invent time travel. And what kind of sick bastard would lie on a questionnaire? But I gotta call a NITPICK POINT, because everyone in the world seems to be aware of the time shift, and the fact that their lives could change forever with no notice - wouldn't people maybe band together and outlaw time travel, if it's so inconvenient for everybody?
Nick takes steps to protect his memories and his sanity, he goes to the mall and visits a company that's a bit like LifeLock - only instead of protecting their identity, they save photos, documents, videos on a time-shift proof drive or something, so after a time shift people can just check the drive and, umm, remember the old life before the changes. Yeah, I'm sure that will help - but I already see the problem with the company's logic. If there's a time shift, it's possible that a customer visiting that store is one of the things that got changed - and if they never visited the store, then they never safeguarded their memories. So that store is a total scam...
My biggest problem here, though, is with the visual nature of the time shift, which looks like a big watery pressure wall that moves spatially, from say, east to west. You can see it coming in space, but not in time - you wouldn't see a real chronic (?) wave coming, because it would approach you from the past, not from the west. And things wouldn't change NOW, all of a sudden, because they would have changed THEN, so your NOW would be different, but it also would somehow always have been this new other way. I know, I know, there's no real way to show that all with visual effects, so they did the best they could, but it's just not enough. It's like in "Everything Everywhere All at Once" when they had those little diagrams on their phones about where all the different multiverses ARE, but it's meant to be symbolic, they don't really mean that this reality is next to THAT one and that other one is three realities up and to the left, it's a visual depiction of something that can't be depicted visually.
The two films are sort of connected in a way, if you follow the Marvel Comics theory of time travel, that you can't change the present by changing the past, but by changing the past you can create a new divergent timeline, which you can then live in if you choose, because it's better than the one you were in before, except there might already be another version of you living in the new divergent timeline. Kill that idiot or merge with him and move on with your life, I say. But the theory is that every choice you make creates a potential new timeline, and so keep that in mind as you go about your life, and just maybe you can build a better life for yourself without getting bogged down in regret. And if you make a mistake, just go back in time and fix it, what could POSSIBLY go wronger, besides everything?
In the new reality, Nick uses his self-driving car to go home (this tech came along just in time, right before everyone's addresses started moving around because of time shifts!) and he's relieved to find he has a dog again! Oh, yeah, and a wife, it's his ex-girlfriend that he never broke up with (or perhaps got back together with) in this reality. Great news, she's very beautiful, but also bad news, because she's just not Janine. Nick can't help feeling that something is "off", he's not supposed to remember his old life in the new reality, but deep down, maybe he does?
When Nick learns that his (somehow-Asian?) sister spent all the money she had to fix her own life by changing the timestream, he decides to do it himself, and most likely it costs him all the money he's got, but hey, it's worth a shot. First he has to fill out that rigorous questionnaire and he has to promise not to save JFK or kill Ronald Reagan, and then he's off. He beats Tommy at his own game by going back to JUST before Tommy met Janine, attending a beach party that the young version of him was too sick to go to, and telling Tommy that he's about to break up with his girlfriend, and Tommy should ask her out. It's a brilliant move, because if Tommy finds happiness with Alex, then he'll never marry Janine, and problem solved.
Right. This guy spent all the money he had just to crash a party that he missed out on 13 years ago - but before he goes, he leaves a note for the younger Nick, telling him that the right woman for him is out there, he's just got to be patient. Jeez, you'd think he'd leave her name and address in that note, but OK, maybe he doesn't remember it. Back to the present, and it turns out Nick forgot just ONE little thing - he only met Janine because she was married to Tommy, so by hooking Tommy up with another woman, he accidentally prevented himself from meeting the love of his life. So, Nick is alone in the world for a while - was it worth it? Or will he run into her one day and know it, because he got that letter from himself? Only time will tell, as they say.
One time-travel film down, 9 more to go - I should really make more of an effort to get to them this Movie Year.
Also starring Leslie Odom Jr. (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Freida Pinto (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Cynthia Erivo (last seen in "Harriet"), Jadyn Wong, Ulka Simone Mohanty, Elizabeth Weinstein (last seen in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"), Gourav Shah, Hiro Kanagawa (last seen in "Midway"), Charles Singh (last seen in "Colossal"), Laysla De Oliveira, Kaylah Zander, James Kirk (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Natalie D'Amico, Alessandro Juliani (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Adam Beauchesne (last seen in "Tucker and Dale vs Evil"), Johannah Newmarch, Samantha Hum (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen").
RATING: 7 out of 10 old-timey radios (that somehow still work?)
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