Time-travel fatigue is a thing (#SFWApro)

I enjoyed THE RUBY RING (1997) the first time I caught it (for an entry in Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan) but watching it as a time-travel film only showed how tired I am of time-travel memes and tropes. The story of a young woman whose wish on a magic ring (to live in a big house with servants) goes awry (it’s the 19th century and she’s one of the servants) is decent in its own right, but everything is way too familiar now, from the protagonist’s resistance to believing when she is, or the endbit when she discovers her 19tth century lover’s double and descendant in the present.The new maid tried to burn the house down!”

RETROACTIVE (1996) by contrast, stunk the first time I saw it and hasn’t improved: Jim Belushi plays a psycho crook who launches a bloodbath, but fortunately a cop fleeing him wanders into a mad scientist’s lab—oh look, a time machine! Which mostly allows for the same people to get killed again, plus an added body count! Avoid. “Yes, he was loud, obnoxious and he smelled bad, but I didn’t think he was insane!”

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HARUHI SUSIMAYA (2010) takes place following the second season (which I haven’t seen yet—it’s amazingly difficult to find, given my wariness about file-sharing sites) in which Kyon suddenly finds himself in a world where Haruhi  never formed the SOS Brigade, which forces him to admit his life is much more fun with her in it (though he comes off as Best Friend rather than lover). At three hours, this is pushing it, but I must admit it was entertaining all the way. “This event is only a crisis for the person who witnesses it.”

The TV series PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA (2011) is a dark and absorbing twist on the magical girl genre as Madoka and her best friend Sayuka are invited by the catlike Kyubey to become magical girls and fight against witches … but as the magical girl Homura warns them, there’s more going on than it appears (and yes, it involves time travel in a way). Very good, and the visuals are incredibly imaginative (all rights to poster with current holder). “With so many people on this planet, I can’t see why the loss of a few lives upsets you so.

Unfortunately PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA THE MOVIE: Rebellion (2013)felt like an unnecessary sequel (much less satisfying than the Haruhi Susimaya film above) as the magical girls from the series appear to be living in a reboot universe, but Homura begins to suspect it’s something much worse … They could have skipped this. “It seems reasonable I would overthrow the laws laid down by a god, does it not?”

CSA: Confederate States of America (2004) is a mockumentary looking back at American history since the South won the Civil War (by convincing the European nations it was a fight for property rights, something they were willing to back), reintroduced slavery to the Union, then built a Confederate slave empire in South America, while Canada remains a hotbed of escaped slaves and abolition, glaring at the US from across the “cotton curtain.” Entertaining, but flawed—like some print alt.histories I’ve read, it tries too hard to keep history close to ours, so JFK and Nixon are the presidential contenders in 1960 and the US still winds up in Vietnam (why when the Cold War is with Canada? Who knows). However the fake commercials in the broadcast are creepily well-done (“The Slave Shopping Network has brought back the joy of shopping for slaves.”) “The world was always ours—we just ain’t claimed it yet.”

KIN DZA DZA! (1986) gets in the appendix for a last-minute time-travel ending to what’s otherwise a tedious, unfunny satire in which two Soviets transported to an alien planet have long, tedious, unfunny conversations with the aliens. Maybe if I were Russian it would work better. “Do you remember what number I was given by the guy who took my socks?”