‘Timestalker’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
In Alice Lowe’s very dry, very funny satire of historical romances, Agnes (Lowe) keeps dying — often brutally — then reincarnating in various historical eras. In each one she pursues the same scamp, Alex (Aneurin Barnard). “You’re the love of my lives,” she tells him. At the same time, she remains oblivious that her loyal friend Meg (Tanya Reynolds) might want a little more from her. Lowe has mastered a distinctive touch that incorporates cartoonish gore, surreal bite and precisely written dialogue. “I have everything I have ever wanted,” Agnes, then an aristocrat, says in 1793 while dreamily petting a pink cat. “Fine teeth. My books. A handsome house. A hale and hearty husband, who is oft-absent.”
Of course what Agnes has ever wanted is the eternal bad boy. One of the best sequences takes place in 1980, when Alex turns up as an Adam Ant-type pop star and Agnes sports the best perm this side of Nancy Wheeler in “Stranger Things.” Does it ever work out? Does Agnes learn? Our daft heroine hopscotches across centuries and goes after the object of her desire while always looking half out of it, which is at least great fun for the viewer.
‘Drive Back’
Just think: If Kim (Crystal Foster) and Reid (Zack Gold) knew Greek mythology, they might have noticed that the shortcut that looked so good on the map would lead them through Charon County — a possible allusion to the ferryman who transports the dead to the underworld. It’s one of the many enjoyable details embedded in Cody Ashford’s movie, a horror-sci-fi hybrid that delivers above what its normie premise might suggest.
On their way home after their engagement party at a country cabin, Kim and Reid get lost and end up on a remote road that happens to be a spatiotemporal loop, as if they’d become stuck inside an Escher drawing. “Drive Back” deals with the inevitable timeline spaghetti quite well, which is rare enough in this genre to be mentioned. But what’s really interesting about the movie is how it uses differing perceptions — the two main characters often disagree on what they see or hear — to symbolize a troubled relationship. This couple never seem on the same page, and the film makes good dramatic use of their discord. The main interrogation hovering above their heads is whether they need to work together to survive their ordeal or whether it will end them for good. “Drive Back” provides a satisfying answer.
‘Slingshot’
We all have some favorite cinematic subgenres and will watch anything remotely connected to them. Mine include submarine movies and their science-fiction equivalents: claustrophobic thrillers set on a small spacecraft. In Mikael Hafstrom’s film, such a ship is heading to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The members of the three-man crew, headed by Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne), are awakened from their hypersleep at regular intervals to run tests. The polite computer voice that is de rigueur in such environments tells us, however, that the hibernation drugs can have “mild side effects.” Uh-oh. After the ship gets dinged in an accident, the astronauts must decide whether they should turn back or continue. Nobody agrees on anything and paranoia sets in.
“Slingshot” is told mostly from the perspective of John (Casey Affleck, whose regular-guy lack of affect is very effective in this context), the only one to realize what’s going on, unless, of course, he’s going crazy. It could be both: What happens when the person who seems to get it isn’t all there? The movie does not make enough of this intriguing idea, preferring a Shyamalan-esque twist. Some might see that as a cop-out, but it actually fits this nifty little psychological thriller.
‘The Last Movie Ever Made’
It’s tough to find family fare that isn’t based on pre-existing intellectual properties, so Nathan Blackwell’s movie must be commended for being nowhere near the franchised world. The premise is that for the past hundred years humanity has been a gigantic computer simulation created by future scientists in order to model behavior. Unfortunately we all came up short and our future overlords are pulling the plug. (So what happens to them? Never mind.) With weeks left, the underachieving slob Marshall (Adam Rini) decides to complete a sci-fi movie he’d started in high school, when he was possibly even nerdier than he is now. He gets the old gang back together and off they go to make their Ed Wood-worthy masterpiece with tinfoil, cardboard and a whole lot of enthusiasm.
Movies about the end of Earth as we know it are not uncommon these days, but Blackwell’s lighthearted approach has a small-town vibe that makes it stand out from its doomy peers — along with the meta fact that “The Last Movie Ever Made” itself looks like a low-budget, heartfelt end-times effort. The best parts are about the making of Marshall’s epic, but the biggest surprise is how touching this film’s ending is.
‘Meanwhile on Earth’
It was fairly surprising when the French director Jérémy Clapin’s debut, “I Lost My Body,” was nominated for best animated feature at the 2020 Academy Awards. That movie, after all, was the bittersweet story of a man and his severed hand — not quite “Toy Story 4” (which won the Oscar). Clapin has switched to live action for his follow-up, but he is still interested in the idea of connection, and still has an off-kilter perspective. Elsa (Megan Northam) has lost her brother, Franck (Sébastien Pouderoux), to a space mission from which he never returned. She is adrift, consumed by grief, so it’s easy to understand her willingness to hold on to any kind of hope — even if it comes in the unlikely form of a disembodied voice informing her that Franck is still alive, but held by aliens. Hearing instructions through a gelatinous earbud, Elsa does the mysterious being’s bidding, hoping to save her brother. But is she really in contact with extraterrestrial beings, or has her grasp on reality become so frayed that she’s hearing voices? “Meanwhile on Earth” may look like a sober sci-fi family drama, but underneath it’s very odd, quite macabre and occasionally jarringly violent.
