Spring 2020, Issue No. 19.3
TIME TRAVEL NEXUS PRESENTS . . .
Streaming Time Travel Films: Spring 2020
Part III: Hulu! Disney+! New Amazon!
—Up in the ITTDB Citadel, we were just wondering whether you’d finished watching the 30 (or so) time travel films now on Netflix (see Part I of our Spring 2020 blog) and the 99+ time travel films now on Amazon Prime Video (see Part II from last week)?! If so, then you’re ready for today’s Part III with another 40 films: Some are newly streaming on Amazon, and the rest are from Hulu and Disney+.
You’d better get watching (and drop me a line at main@colorado.edu if you’d like to join the librarians up in the ITTDB Citadel who are doing all this indexing work)!
New to Amazon Prime Video!
Not all of these first 11 movies are new to Amazon Prime, but we didn’t notice them last week when we gave you a list of 99+ time travel films from Amazon.
Second Chance (1977) [short film]
Note: On Amazon Prime, search for the movie Dead of Night, which for some reason is listed as from 2009. The first segment is the one you want. It’s a Richard Matheson adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1956 story “Second Chance” about a college student who lovingly restores a 1920s-era Jordan Playboy roadster and drives it back in time.
I remember what someone once said; I think it was Einstein or somebody like that. He compared time to a winding river, with all of us in a boat drifting along between two high banks. And we can’t see the future beyond the next curve or the past beyond the curves in back of us, but it’s all still there, as real as the moment around us. To which I now add my own theory . . . that you can’t drive into the past in a modern car because there were no modern cars back then, and you can’t drive into 1926 along a four-lane superhighway, but my car and I—the way I felt about it anyway—were literally rejected that night by our own time.
The Final Countdown (1980)
Observer Warren Lasky is aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz when a storm takes the carrier back to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Should they prevent the attack? What will be the consequences of saving a politician who may become Roosevelt’s running mate? Sadly, the ship is returned to the present before we find the answer or the ship can do anything vaguely cool.
Today is December 7, 1941. I’m sure we are all aware of the significance of this date in this place in history. We are going to fight a battle that was lost before most of you were born. This time, with God’s help, it’s going to be different. . . . Good Luck.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1989)
Note: Amazon seems to have two versions of this one. One of them is free for Amazon Prime subscribers. From the title card, it looks like a cartoon, but it’s not.
|from a publicity release|: Young Karen Jones finds herself in sixth-century Camelot after she falls from a horse. Using her modern-day “magic”, she fights the evil Merlin (none other than René Auberjonois) and Mordrid to restore peace to King Arthur’s court.
Die Tür (2009)
|from a publicity release|: A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter’s death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.
Action Replayy (2010)
Note: Amazon seems to have two versions of this movie. The one that’s free for Amazon Prime subscribers is 2 hours and 5 minutes.
|from a publicity release|: A son tries to revive his parents’s lifeless marriage by traveling back in time to the 70s when their romance was budding.
The History of Time Travel (2014)
|from a publicity release|: A fictional documentary about the creation of the worlds first time machine, the men who created it, and the unintended ramifications it has on world events.
24 (2016)
|from a publicity release|: A scientist invents a time-traveling watch, which his evil twin brother wants to get hold of. Years later, the scientist’s son batles his uncle, who is still desperately in search of the watch.
The Battle of Worcester (2017) [short film]
|from a publicity release|: The first-ever film focusing on one of the most important battles in British history—the Battle of Worcester. A freak accident sends lazy college dropout Tim Bagnall back to 17th Century England. He becomes embroiled in the Battle of Worcester—the final battle of the English Civil War.
Time Freak (2018)
When Debbie breaks up with often-clueless physics genius Stillwell, he does the normal thing and invents a time machine for him and his friend to go back and fix every wayward relationship moment.
I just love the proofs and the equations and the whole riddle of it all.
Unli Life (2018)
|from a publicity release|: A man discovers a magical bottle of whiskey which would let him go back in time. The perfect solution that would help him get back with his ex-girlfriend, he goes from different eras, hoping that he could go back to the time where he could prevent their break-up.
超时空同居 [How Long Will I Love U] (2018)
|from a publicity release|: In this rollicking romantic comedy, a man and a woman living in the same apartment nearly twenty years apart wake one day to find their timelines have merged.
Hulu!
Demolition Man (1993)
Both the psychopath and the police sergeant undergo cryogenic sleep, but there’s no actual time travel.
I’m a seamstress? That’s great. I come out of cryo-prison and I’m Betsy-fucking-Ross.
Happy Accidents (2000)
Ruby Weaver tells her therapist that her latest beau, Sam Deed, is sweet, kind, and quirky—and the fantasy that he’s come back from the year 2470 because of that photo he saw of her (possibly to make an important change) is nothing more than a game that they play.
Break the causal chain.
Free Birds (2013)
Reggie, the turkey who’s awarded the Thanksgiving presidential pardon, has it pretty cushy until he’s kidnapped by Jake for a mission (via time machine S.T.E.V.E., voiced by George Takei) to stop the first Thanksgiving.
We’re going back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get us off the menu.
My Dad Is Scrooge (2014)
Let me get this straight: The animals of Woodsley Farm can talk and show home movies to Ollie and June’s Scrooge of a dad (that would be E. B.), they can drive the family car (that would be the pig), and they can even do hypnosis (that’s the rat, of course), but they can’t actually time take him to the past or future, not even to directly observe? Hardly seems deserving of the name E. B. Verdict: no actual time travel.
Talking Bunny of Christmas Present: Like I said, sick animals.
Dad: Oh, is he, uh, . . ., I mean will he, uh, . . .
Bunny: Don’t know.
Half-Shell Heroes: Blast to the Past (2015)
|from a publicity release|: Told in the style of Playmates’ Half-Shell Heroes action figure line, the storyline finds the Turtles going back in time to the Jurassic Era, where they encounter friendly dinosaurs from the past and dangerous aliens from the future who have a nefarious plan of their own. However, things get even more complicated when Triceratons, Bebop and Rocksteady show up!
Narcopolis (2015)
|from a publicity release|: In the near future, Frank, a police officer, discovers that the legalization of all recreational drugs comes with a price.
Curvature (2017)
|from a publicity release|: Helen tries to cope with the recent death of her husband, a scientist who killed himself right when he was on the verge of successfully completing the invention of a time machine. One day, she receives a phone call, and a voice suspiciously resembling her own voice warns her that she’s in danger. Is it possible Helen has time travelled? And what could have led her to do something like that?
Another Time (2018)
|from a publicity release|: Just because a journey leads you somewhere you didn’t expect, doesn’t mean you ended up in the wrong place.
Time Freak (2018)
When Debbie breaks up with often-clueless physics genius Stillwell, he does the normal thing and invents a time machine for him and his friend to go back and fix every wayward relationship moment.
I just love the proofs and the equations and the whole riddle of it all.
A Christmas Carol (2019)
A three-part mini-series.
|from a publicity release|: A radical retelling of the holiday classic that starts with a Victorian performance of the Charles Dickens tale before diving into the imagination of one of the children in the audience, taking the story to a darker fantasy realm.
Note from the Citadel: We’ve never considered Dickens’ original story to involve actual time travel since in that story Scrooge could not interact with the past or future. What do you think? We’re waiting until next Christmas to watch this mini-series to determine for sure whether this adaptation takes time travel more seriously.
Disney+!
Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979)
|from a publicity release|: A NASA spacecraft proves Einstein right when, travelling faster than light, it ends up near King Arthur’s Camelot. On board are big-hearted Tom Trimble and Hermes, the look-alike robot he built. Tom immediately makes friends with pretty Alisande and enemies with the awful knight Sir Nordred. It seems Nordred is out to oust Arthur, while Alisande’s father is not the goose she believes him to be but is also a victim of Nordred’s schemes. It’s as well the Americans have arrived.
Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) [short film]
You’ll enjoy all the Disney characters’s renditions of all the Dickens characters, from Scrooge McDuck (as Scrooge, of course) to Goofy (as Marley), Jiminy Cricket (as the Ghost of Christmas Past), and the weasels (as Scrooge’s gravediggers).
With Dickens, we always want to know whether Scrooge actually time travels or merely observes the past and present. In this case, none of the spirits explicitly explain one way or the other, but if you watch carefully when Scrooge and Jiminy arrive in the past, you’ll spot Scrooge definitely interacting with the a physical object in the past when he’s unable to see the festivities inside Fezzywig’s. Verdict: probably time travel!
If these shadows remain unchanged, I see an empty chair where Tiny Tim once sat.
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Twelve-year-old David Freeman stumbles down a ravine and wakes up eight years later without having aged, but that’s not the time travelin’ in this movie because (as it turns out) the missing eight years came from mere relativistic time dilation while he was away with aliens. The actual time travel occurs only after he becomes the pilot of a small space ship whose mission is collecting specimens from around the galaxy.
This is totally rad. You’re like my big little brother.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
|from a publicity release|: A retelling of the classic Dickens tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, miser extraordinaire. He is held accountable for his dastardly ways during night-time visitations by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.
Several of us saw this one with our kids (both grown-up kids and little ones) when it first came out, but at the time we weren’s in tune with the nuances of time travel vs. mere observation. We’ll watch it anew at Christmastime this year.
A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (1995)
This time around, the Yankee is failed little-leaguer Calvin Fuller who’s pulled back to Camelot where we see him with a flashlight, a Walkman, roller blades, superglue, a mountain bike with training wheels, bubble gum, karate, a candy bar, a Swiss Army knife, an aging Arthur, and a young princess.
Swiss Army knife! The very name conjurs up greatness!
The Kid (2000)
I never quite figured out how Russ Duritz meets his own eight-year-old self, Rusty, but time travel must have been involved and the young kid certainly manages to straighten out the older kid.
So, I’m forty, I’m not married, I don’t fly jets, and I don’t have a dog? I grow up to be a loser.
Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge (2001)
Teenage witch Marnie Piper has a mom (who doesn’t want her to carry on in the witch tradition), a grandma (Debbie Reynolds, who wants to take her on as an apprentice), and Kal (a cute guy hanging around who turns out to be the son of the family nemesis). When Marnie gets trapped by Kal in the dimension of Halloweentown, she and her troll friend Luke use time travel to escape; later they use a black-holeish “timeline” to get back to the present and save the day.
You know that looks just like a Stephen Hawking description of a non-stellar black hole.
The Poof Point (2001)
Eddie and Marie’s parents are merely aging backwards; there is no actual time travel.
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2006)
Cinderella’s nasty stepmother uses the Fairy Godmother’s wand to turn back time and enlarge the slipper to fit one of the nasty stepsisters.
The wand is not a toy!
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)
|from a publicity releasee|: Now that Santa and Mrs. Claus have the North Pole running smoothly, the Counsel of Legendary Figures has called an emergency meeting on Christmas Eve! The evil Jack Frost has been making trouble, looking to take over the holiday! So he launches a plan to sabotage the toy factory and compel Scott to invoke the little-known Escape Clause and wish he’d never become Santa.
Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Twelve-year-old orphan genius Lewis along with his 13-year-old buddy Wilbur Robinson from the future mangle every known time-travel trope while fighting a clichéd villian with a clever hat.
Remember, I’ve got a time machine. You mess up again, and I’ll just keep coming back ’til you get it right.
Minutemen (2008)
When 14-year-old Charlie invents a time machine, he gets together with his nerdy friend and the school biker to fix the many social embarrassments that have been inflicited upon fellow outcasts.
Stop! [Flashes badge] Bureau of Weights and Measurements!
12 Dates of Christmas (2011)
After the requisite bump on the head, Kate Stanton finds herself reliving Christmas Eve over and over, whereupon romantic hijinks ensue.
That ship has sailed. You blew your chance. You can’t go back and change it.
Time Travel Mater (2012) [short film]
Mater, the sidekick in Cars and the hero of Cars 2, spins a good yarn in each episode of the Disney Channel irregular series Mater’s Tall Tales, including a time trip to Radiator Springs in #11.
Wait a minute—if Stanley don’t stay here in the past . . . ah choo! . . . ahhhh! . . . there’ll be no town here in the future!
Inside Out (2015)
Admittedly, the time travel in Inside Out is just one throwaway Bing Bong joke, but in my opinion it cements the central role of the time travel meme within the popular culture of my lifetime.
Once, we flew back in time . . .
Doctor Strange (2016)
|from a publicity release|: After his career is destroyed, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under her wing and trains him to defend the world against evil.
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
|from a publicity release|: After the disappearance of her scientist father, three peculiar beings send Meg, her brother, and her friend to space in order to find him.
We long ago decided that the original children’s book has no actual time travel, but up in the ITTDB Citadel, we haven’t yet had a chance to check out this recent film.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
|from a publicity release|: After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, the universe is in ruins due to the efforts of the Mad Titan, Thanos. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers must assemble once more in order to undo Thanos’ actions and restore order to the universe once and for all, no matter what consequences may be in store.
That’s all we have for this week. Write a note down below to let us know your favorites—or even to nominate one of your favorites for an Eloi Medal!
And keep on travelin’
—Michael