TOTAL REALITY (1997) is a film with a good premise—a Scientology-type cult has taken over the government by the end of the next century, so a revolutionary is traveling back in time to kill the founder—and bad execution. Once the time traveler (and the Suicide Squad team of misfits forced to try and stop him) arrives, this becomes a mediocre action movie where people can take astonishing amounts of fire at point blank range without falling down. “Every day this man gets to spread his philosophy, another thousand people die.”
DREAMLAND (2007) by contrast has bad execution and apparently no premise other than having weird things happen around Roswell—which based on what we see may be a Surreal Mindscape, ghosts or possibly time travel (this comes off as the creators flinging shit at the wall and filming whatever stuck). So muddled I’m not sure it even qualifies for the appendix. “Megan is just a figment of her own imagination.”
DIMENSION (2006) has an interesting premise and a good, quirky execution: working through a hardware store owner, God gives everyone in one Chicago neighborhood the chance to alter their reality by three inches. The recipients have a wide range of latitude to interpret that gift (“I want two inches of length, one of circumference.”) and a couple of them do it in a time-travel way (like a woman who almost saved her kid from a fatal fall). Only enough for the appendix, but a fun one to watch; rights to image with current holder. “It’s an anagram for ‘triad people.’”
LURID TALES: THE CASTLE QUEEN (1996) is a classic example of how low-budget films jazz their titles up to get more viewers. The premise certainly sounds lurid enough—a modern-day college boy is swept back to post-Civil War England where he helps an impoverished but hot noblewoman turn her estate into a house of ill fame—but viewing this offers less luridity than the average raunch comedy. If I’d paid to watch this, I’d be asking for my money back. “We are but children in the eyes of God, but we are mature in the eyes of men!”
GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991) is one of two kaijin entries in my book (eventually I’ll need to watch Rebirth of Mothra 3 as well); kindly time travelers arrive in Japan to ask for help capturing Godzilla in 1944 (when he’s just an ordinary dinosaur) and thereby saving Japan from a devastating rampage in the 21st century. However this turns out to be just a scheme to leave Japan helpless against a mutated King Ghidorah—or can Japan resurrect Big G to save them? This is entertaining but confusing in both premise and execution, as kidnapping Godzilla doesn’t erase the original continuity (but does, apparently try to reconcile it with the reborn Godzilla of 1985) “We came here to warn you about your country’s gloomy future—because in the century that follows, there is no Japan.”
AND THEN CAME LOLA (2009) owes its premise to Run Lola Run: a commitment-phobic lesbian photographer struggles to deliver some photos for her girlfriend’s big presentation but has different results in three different attempts. I think one reason I classify this and its role model as non-parallel world films is that they both seem to offer the final scene of the film as the “real” ending, where Sliding Doors implies both story arcs are valid. Entertaining in its own right, if not up to the original. “If there’s no ‘me,’ there is no ‘we.’”
