The day HE came Home! (#SFWApro)

I missed yesterday’s review post because TYG and I took a trip to Greenville SC (same place I went last weekend), had a great time and I didn’t get online as much as I expected. That said, time-travel reviews!

THE MILKY WAY (1969) is a Luis Bunuel film in which two modern-day pilgrims traveling across Europe keep slipping back in time to encounter heretics through the ages (“The Pope does not follow the true way of Christ!”). This qualifies for the appendix (I might give it more space if it wasn’t French) but in its own right, too aimless to work—I’m guessing Bunuel had a religious point but I wasn’t interested enough to figure it out). “A heresy that denies a mystery can attract the ignorant and the shallow but it cannot blot out the truth.”

2046 (2004) is a dreary Chinese movie in some kind of trilogy that caught my interest because the movie-within-the-movie involves a fictional tale of someone traveling to 2046 for relief from their grief … but that doesn’t appear to relate even tangentially to time-travel. “Her past was like the hand she always kept gloved.”

NARUTO SHIPPENDEN THE MOVIE: The Lost Tower (2010) has the eponymous anime ninja stumble back in time hunting a clan-member gone rogue. In the past he discovers the ninja has set himself up as trusted (but treacherous) adviser) to a young local monarch while scheming to tap a mystical source of absolute power. I’m not familiar with this mythos but this was pretty entertaining in a mindless-action way. “No—he is invincble.”

FLASHBACKS (2006) probably wouldn’t have tripped my radar if it had been called by its original name (Visiones) and it definitely doesn’t qualify—while early scenes were murky enough that I wondered if it was a do-over story, it turns out it’s a Mysterious Force giving people a knowledge of their doom to see how they cope. Clunky. “If you have to give it a name, call it god.”

HOUSE II: The Second Story (1987) is a standard churn-it-out sequel (no connection to the original I can see) that also has no connection to the house it takes place in (i.e., it wouldn’t have mattered if they picked a different building)  Arye Gross discovers a crystal skull buried in great-great-grandfather Royal Dano’s grave has not only kept Gramps’ mummy alive for decades, but now begins opening gateways into prehistory and the Old West. A fantasy comedy that doesn’t work at all; Bill Maher plays a romantic rival and John Ratzenberger as an Adventurer Electrician. “Is she a virgin, because I’ve never seen one before.”

Several time-travel references list the TV series  Futurama because Frye travels into the future by suspended animation (which doesn’t meet my definition) but FUTURAMA: Bender’s Big Score (2007) actually makes the cut. Can’t say the story of aliens using Frye’s time-travel tattoo to loot the greatest treasures of history makes me regret that I never caught the series—though I imagine if I knew the characters, this would provoke more interest from me. “Prepare to see a bureaucrat’s brain in action!” SECRET (2007) is a Chinese time-travel love story in which a music student discovers the girl he’s fallen for is traveling from twenty years in the past by the power of magical sheet music. This would have worked better if they hadn’t tried to pull a Sixth Sense  reveal—the spell pointlessly makes the girl invisible to everyone else, thereby setting up the A-Ha! moment. More interesting for this view of Chinese conservatory students than for the story itself. “Obviously he has no taste—that’s what future boys are like.”