Timecrimes.

"It seems somewhat fitting that David Cronenberg should be slated to remake Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes," writes Andrew Schenker in Slant. "After all, it was Videodrome, the Canadian auteur's 1983 what-is-reality mindfuck that set the pattern for several generations of cinematic headtrips of which Vigalonda's film stands as the latest example. But in Timecrimes, the director seems as intent on launching a Hitchcockian exploration into the ethics of looking as he is on mining the territory of the contemporary puzzle picture, even as his narrative spins off into a myriad of directions and repeatedly forks back on itself."

Updated through 12/15.

"Timecrimes feels like it wants to be a picture about the prison of predestination, but instead its middle unfolds as a vain celebration of Vigalondo's cleverness," writes Henry Stewart in the L Magazine. "The movie, thankfully, is only deceptively uneven though; Vigalondo knows where he's going, even if it doesn't always feel like it."

Jim Ridley in the Voice: "[E]ven though Vigalondo's obvious direction lingers over every carefully arranged tile in the toppling-domino plot - hey, you think that cryptic squiggle on the calendar actually means something? - there's still some sinister amusement in watching them stack and fall."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Vigalondo "about time travel movies, playing Norman Bates in a spook house, and his love for the films of Rob Zombie."

Susan King talks with Vigalondo for the Los Angeles Times.

At the SpoutBlog, Brandon Harris asks Vigalondo about his media diet.

Earlier: James Van Maanen and reviews from Sundance.

Update: Timecrimes "makes its temporal loop-de-loops easy to follow while producing something thoroughly mind-bending and, what's more, successful as an entertaining thriller," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "Vigalondo's brilliant stroke is in telling the same story three times, the first time leaving mysteries unsolved, the second time solving them, and the third time going back over familiar ground to reveal even more mysteries."

Updates, 12/11: Timecrimes "is that rarest of films: a movie about mystery that remains impenetrable even after its hand is played," writes Simon Abrams in the New York Press. It's "the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure story."

James Van Maanen talks with Vigalondo and Before the Fall director F Javier Gutiérrez.

Updates, 12/13: "[W]hile it isn't that hard to stay a step or two ahead of Timecrimes," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club, "the movie is still a nifty little genre piece, an old-fashioned science-fiction mind-game with a healthy dollop of 'Oh, the irony.' Vigalondo throws in a few good twists, some of which are genuinely unpredictable, and though the film as a whole could be funnier and scarier, it couldn't be much zippier."

The film's got many taking another look at Primer, Damon Smith among them:

Most time-travel films position their protagonist (usually a man) to arbitrate a moral crisis created by a disturbance in the time-space continuum, an aberrant circumstance prompted by some selfish motive (love, greed, glory, hubris, scientific curiosity) on the part of one or several characters. In the case of Primer, Abe and Aaron are not mad tinkerers at all, but factotums of corporate industry, ultra-productive rationalists committed to '36-hour days' who ultimately run up against the limits of their own emotional and psychological endurance as extended-time voyagers. The film is just 77 minutes long, and the jargon-heavy dialogue can at times obscure the relevance of key scenes, but these are minor flaws in an otherwise suspenseful, ingenious iteration of the time-travel genre.

"Proof positive that a naked hottie and whiz-bang pacing can disguise the most gaping narrative cracks, Timecrimes makes sci-fi lemonade out of low-budget lemons," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times.

Online listening tip. Ed Champion talks with Vigalondo.

Online viewing tip. FilmCatcher interviews Vigalondo.

Update, 12/15: "Cronenberg has a cool intelligence that might be right for this material, but there aren't the kinky psychological layers to the situation that I would think would need to be there for Cronenberg to truly be interested in the project," writes Paul Matwychuk, speculating on the probable remake. "Timecrimes is very much a screenwriting exercise right now, and not much more - although the ultimate fate of the naked girl is something Cronenberg might be able to develop into something nicely disturbing."

Posted by dwhudson at December 10, 2008 7:50 AM