Flight of the Navigator (1986)

I'd heard of this title a few times and knew it to have had a moderately warm reception. When I saw it listed on Disney+, I figured it promised to be uplifting (in more ways than one) and appealing to '80s nostalgia. And short, at 90 minutes.

In Fort Lauderdale in 1978, unaccompanied 12-year-old David (Joey Cramer) falls into a ravine. When he wakes up, eight years have passed, yet he doesn't look or sound any older. Furthermore, he subconsciously has a telepathic connection with computers. A NASA official (Howard Hesseman) soon links him to a captured ET spaceship, which must have transported him at ultra-relativistic speed to an uncharted planet, where his brain was augmented. David doesn't like being taken to a national-secret government stronghold for study, so he sneaks out to the craft -- which opens only for him. A robot in control (Paul Reubens), whom David nicknames Max, identifies him as the navigator. Max needs to copy backup records from David's brain in order to go home; in return, Max promises to drop David off where he wants. Of course, NASA wants them both back....

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Boy, six years already? Well, as Deadpool himself points out, delays can happen when IP changes hands. A friend and I had tentatively planned to see this together when we heard the news, but he saw it ahead of me; now I got the initiative to catch up.

Wade "Deadpool" Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), divorced and unable to join an esteemed team of heroes, retires from merc work. He actually seems to be in a tolerable situation, until the secret yet powerful bureaucracy/cult called the Time Variance Authority captures him -- not for his past forbidden uses of time travel, oddly enough. TVA Agent Paradox (Matthew Macfayden) offers him an important role in "the Sacred Timeline," which sounds good to DP until he understands that he'd have to leave all his friends behind in a timeline doomed by the loss of its "anchor being," Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Indeed, Paradox, without his superiors' knowledge or consent, plans to euthanize that timeline with a special bomb instead of letting it dwindle for millennia. DP would rather save it. He travels to multiple timelines before he finds a version of Wolverine he can strong-arm into coming with him. Paradox deems him the worst of all Wolverines, a drunk who failed everyone he cared about, and says that even a good replacement wouldn't suffice. But DP's not giving up, even when the TVA sends both antiheroes to the Void, a Mad Max-type realm of rejects from various timelines.

Suzume (2022)

Ah, my first anime in about five months. Apart from that, all I knew going in was that it involved a young adult duo, a magic door, and an ominous-looking feline. That much looked promising to me.

The title character (Nichole Sakura), an orphaned modern high school girl, meets college man Souta (Josh Keaton), who asks where to find nearby ruins. Intrigued by his strange quest and handsome looks, she heads there after him and learns the hard way that he's dealing with dangerous supernatural forces. Specifically, he wants to ensure that an earth-shaking giant "worm" invisible to most people stays locked in the land of the dead, called "the Ever-After" in translation. Alas, Suzume unwittingly moves a "keystone," a statuette that turns into flesh-and-blood talking kitten Daijin (Lena Josephine Marano) and abandons its post, increasing the likelihood of doom on Japan. Souta tries to work alone but grudgingly admits that he'll need Suzume's help to lock secret doors in abandoned areas across Japan until the imprisonment is stabler. Suzume's guardian, Aunt Tamaki (Jennifer Sun Bell), becomes increasingly worried about the girl ditching school and running off with a strange boy. Souta's fair-weather friend Serizawa (Joe Zieja), unaware of his duty, wants to find him too.

Predestination (2014)

No, it's not another flick with a religious focus already. It's an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein time travel short story "'--All You Zombies--'" (yes, that's how it's officially punctuated). I don't blame the studio for changing the title, partly because reaching feature length, specifically 97 minutes, required an extra plot element.

Despite being an Australian production, it's set in the U.S., primarily Cleveland and New York City, in various years between the 1940s and, I think, the '90s at latest. The secret Temporal Bureau has been attempting to prevent or reduce historical disasters, including attacks by the elusive time-traveling "Fizzle Bomber," who is set to kill 10,000 New Yorkers in '75. This alone is more than the Netflix summary will tell you, but don't get the impression that the plot is simple. It's just so full of twists that it's hard not to spoil.

The Adam Project (2022)

Having nothing to do with Adam, this brand-new release didn't tempt me until a friend and I were perusing our Netflix options. He's big on time travel stories (so I've recommended Time Bandits to him), and I hadn't seen one in more than a year. Plus, this one has several Marvel movie alumni.

Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds), son of accidental time travel inventor Louis (Mark Ruffalo), attempts to fly a time jet from 2050 to 2018, the last known time point for his wife, Laura (Zoe Saldana). The tyrannical Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) forbids him, and a gunshot from her right-hand man (Alex Mallari, Jr.) forces Adam to stop in 2022, too injured to fly unassisted for a while. There he meets his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), whom he reluctantly needs to reactivate his jet. Their mission becomes bigger than rescuing one woman: As the trailer reveals, they may see fit to use time travel to prevent its own invention.

Source Code (2011)

This is one of those titles that automatically turned me off: "I'm not enough of a computer geek to get into this." But such snap judgments lose their effectiveness with time, and the continuing popularity of SC was hard for me to ignore. Besides, I liked director Duncan Jones' work on Moon, and here was another sci-fi.

Twenty minutes into the future, if the already dated phone tech is any indication, a terrorist bombs a train in the Chicago area. An experimental government program under Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) retrieves the last eight minutes of memory from one of the victims and sends the mind of biologically similar U.S. Army CPT Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) into it, enabling him to spend eight minutes finding the bomb and its planter however he can. He can retry any number of times, but the sooner he succeeds, the better their chances of preventing the bomber's next attack.

Somewhere in Time (1980)

I had never seen Christopher Reeve in any non-Superman movie except The Remains of the Day, where his role was too minor for my synopsis. Indeed, no other titles in his filmography rang a bell for me, not counting TV shows and lesser remakes. So I opted to check out a cult classic from early in his career.

Chicago playwright Richard Collier (Reeve) is approached by an unfamiliar old woman (Susan French) who hands him an antique watch, implores, "Come back to me," and leaves without explanation. Years later, on a whim, he checks into a Michigan hotel and sees a photo of her as a young adult (Jane Seymour). Obsessed with her beauty, he does research and learns that she, now dead, was Elise McKenna, an actress once quite famous but with little known of her private life. Richard recalls a theory of time travel and implements it in order to court Elise in 1912, when she was a guest at the hotel.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

What kind of Marvel Cinematic Universe fan would I be if I didn't see this, of all entries, in the theater? My dad finally came back, too. The main complaint I've seen about it is that it's hard to talk about without spoiling. Well, I'll give my typical level of skirting the edge. Chances are, if you have enough interest to see Endgame, you either already saw key previous entries or won't mind learning some of what happened in them, most notably the ending of Infinity War.

I had expected most of the movie to consist of the remaining heroes seeking out and fighting Thanos for the Infinity Gauntlet so that they could undo his sudden annihilation of half the life in the universe. Actually, they don't take long to overpower him, but the gauntlet has been emptied of the Infinity Stones, and Thanos probably isn't lying when he says he destroyed them. (What, no periodic repetitions in his war on overpopulation?) For the next five years, they have no hope of reversal -- until Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm and reports that it offers a possibility for time travel. (Told you he had weird physics.)

Mirai (2018)

This 2018 Best Animated Feature nominee, the final one I've viewed, must have received the least attention of the five, at least in the West. After all, the director is Mamoru Hosoda, not Hayao Miyazaki, and the production company is Studio Chizu, not Studio Ghibli. But the fanciful poster drew me in.

Kun, age 4, initially welcomes newborn sister Mirai (whose name means "future") but becomes irritable as his parents pay less attention to him and as Mirai proves too limited in abilities to offer fun. When neither parent watches, however, Kun meets people he shouldn't be able to meet. It begins with the household dog turning into a man with a tail. Then Mirai appears as a 14-year-old, incongruously calling him "big brother." Other strange encounters and travels ensue from there, giving Kun new perspectives on his family and himself.

Dead of Night (1977)

I'm not sure what got this TV movie with a 6.4 on IMDb onto my queue. Someone other than Netflix must have suggested it to me. Anyway, it's not like Night of the Living Dead. It's an anthology more along the lines of The Twilight Zone, starting with a Rod Serling-style narration that explains the title as referring to "a state of mind."

In "Second Chance," a young enthusiast for classic cars restores one from 1926, takes an old road, and finds himself literally in 1926. In "No Such Thing as a Vampire," around the time of Dracula, a woman keeps waking up with a bleeding neck, and her husband and servants can no longer shrug off the village rumors. In "Bobby," a woman appeals to a pagan deity to bring back her drowned son, but he's not quite the same anymore and becomes increasingly hostile.

Deadpool 2 (2018)

I had seen the first DP on DVD, but I had more incentive to go to a theater this time. First of all, the month was almost over and I hadn't used MoviePass to get my money's worth. Second, nothing else showing that I hadn't already seen grabbed me. Third, humor tends to be more enjoyable when a large audience laughs with you.

Wade "Deadpool" Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) actually manages to have a worse time of it than before. In the first act, his wife Vanessa dies (prompting a James Bond opening parody), he futilely attempts suicide, he finally takes up Colossus' (Stefan Kapičić) offer to join the X-Men, and his behavior on his first assignment lands him in a prison for mutants. But for the first time on the big screen, he sees a reason to care about someone other than himself and Vanessa: Russell "Firefist" Collins (Julian Dennison), a teen mutant lashing out at abusive orphanage personnel. Not only is Russell in trouble with the authorities, but time traveler Cable (Josh Brolin again?) channels the Terminator with a personal mission to kill him before he grows worse. Deadpool would rather give Russell a chance at redemption, partly because he relates and partly because Vanessa would want him to.

Your Name. (2016)

Gee, it had been four months since my last reviewed animation and nearly eight since my last reviewed anime. I opted to jump back in with a recent picture that enjoys immense popularity, especially in its homeland, where it broke box office records.

Mitsuha, a modern high school girl in the fictitious backwater town of Itomori, wishes she could be a handsome boy in Tokyo. She kinda gets her wish when she swaps bodies with high-schooler Taki, a switch repeated every time they sleep. Initially, both take it as a realistic dream; when they return to their old selves, they find compelling evidence to the contrary, including acquaintances' behavior around them. They take to writing in smartphone diaries and otherwise leaving messages for each other, hoping not to ruin their lives. This lasts only until the second act, after which Taki misses Mitsuha enough to try to track her down. But he was never prepared for a major complication....

Time Bandits (1981)

I mentioned that I would see another consecutive movie about a boy. Thankfully, it's quite different. In fact, despite the PG rating, I hesitate to count it as a family flick. IMDb doesn't. (Non-American studios, I find, are more likely to have kid-unfriendly stories starring kids.)

Kevin, 11, suffers from parents uninterested in his interest in history. One night, his bedroom is accidentally invaded by six time-traveling dwarves. They're interested in history, of course, but not for the same reason: They want to steal the riches of the past. Despite his disapproval of that plan, Kevin tags along, with nary a language barrier. He learns that they've worked for the Supreme Being himself on maintenance of the space-time continuum, and since they swiped his temporal map, they have to keep moving. (They've been around for eons but seem as vulnerable as humans.) Little do they realize that the scarier threat is from Evil himself, looking to grab the map for his own ends.

About Time (2013)

Ads hastened to point out that writer-director Richard Curtis wrote Love Actually, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. If you think that necessitates a role for Hugh Grant, you're wrong. Instead, we get a couple of Harry Potter alumni.

At 21, the aptly named Tim (Domnhall Gleeson) learns a secret from his father (Bill Nighy): Thanks to an apparent Y-chromosome mutation, he and other male relatives can return to any point in their personal pasts, take a different route, and then snap back to the present. After Tim confirms that he can do it himself, he decides to use it to improve...his love life. And undo mistakes in other matters while he's at it.

Arrival (2016)

My poor dad wasn't feeling well enough to come watch this with me. I suppose I could've waited another week for him, but I've been getting antsy to see the most talked-about Academy Award nominees and hadn't given much thought to Lion yet. In retrospect, La La Land, which he's already seen, would've been a better choice, but I keep feeling reluctant: Ryan Gosling hasn't been in many movies I like, and Damien Chazelle is best known for something that disturbs me. Had I noticed that Arrival was directed by the ever-disturbing Denis Villeneuve, the latter reason wouldn't have worked for me.

Giant alien ships land at twelve seemingly random points far apart on Earth. U.S. Army Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) invites renowned language professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to translate messages from the two known aliens at the U.S. landing site. Unable to work remotely, she comes to meet them face to...face?...and slowly learn their reason for visiting -- hopefully before someone in power jumps to the wrong conclusion. Her biggest help in the endeavor is Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who's more partial to science than language, but that doesn't stop the obvious signs of a budding romance.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

My second favorite medium is video games. This rarely has the slightest bearing on my choices for my favorite medium; I've never seen all of any movie adapted from a game (Wreck-It Ralph doesn't count). But when I learned the premise of this sci-fi feature, I thought, "Huh, so the hero has a save point and infinite lives. Intriguing." To put it in more cinematic terms, it sounded like Groundhog Day, only substituting action for comedy. Oh, and it's not a 24-hour cycle: Only death serves for a reset.

I had not realized just how much emphasis would be on the sci-fi in other regards. A montage in the beginning establishes a war on Earth against aliens, in which humans have won only one battle so far. A handful of humans know why the invaders are so effective: innate time travel properties, combined with a hive mind. Whenever an elite "Alpha" dies, the "Omega" turns back the clock to a set point, retaining memories that the humans don't -- unless the Alpha's blood covers a human, thereby granting him the sole power of automatic resets, along with occasional telepathic connections with the Omega, for as long as he has the right blood in his body. That's what happens to protagonist Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise, still quite watchable), but even demonstrating "foreknowledge" doesn't reliably convince others of his ability, apart from Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who used to be like him. Together, they hope to minimize if not prevent a disastrous ambush and, if possible, kill the Omega.

Interstellar (2014)

Christopher Nolan is so popular that today's top news on IMDb is that he'll direct a movie in 2017 -- with no word on the title, subject, or actors. Personally, I have very mixed feelings about his work. It's consistently admirable and entertaining but always contains bothersome elements that prevent me from loving it, such as an obsession with dead wives and girlfriends. (How does his wife feel about that?)

The protagonist of Interstellar -- identified somewhat confusingly by just his last name, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) -- is a widower, but at least he's not loaded with guilt or vindictiveness. After all, in his time, crop blight has decreased the human population so dramatically that he fears that his daughter Murphy's generation will be the last. (For once, the disaster is not evidently the fault of humans or aliens.) A former astronaut, he's disappointed that schools now teach that the moon landing was a hoax so that kids will be less inclined to become anything other than farmers. Of course, he's not alone: The stealthy remains of NASA have been looking for a habitable world to reach before it's too late. As Cooper discovers, their methods now involve aid from a mysterious source to travel by extra dimensions. He's game to head a mission despite Murphy's protests, but no one can be fully prepared for what happens in the uncharted territory of physics....