The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
FIND MOVIES
Find a Movie
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies

Review: Timecrimes

Bumbling farce gives way to existential horror
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 20, 2009
3.5 3.5 Stars


VIDEO: The trailer for Timecrimes

It all started with a simple act of voyeurism. Or did it? Poor Héctor (Karra Elejalde) is sitting in his back yard when he spots a woman (Bárbara Goenaga) taking off her top. He goes to investigate; before he knows it, he has a body on his hands and is being chased by a stranger whose face is covered with bloody bandages. How will he ever explain this to his wife (Candela Fernández)?

And isn't that himself with a pair of binoculars chatting with her on the lawn? These are just a few of the problems involved with getting transported two hours into the future, and in LosCronocrímenes, first-time director Nacho Vigalondo makes a virtue of minimal production values as he pursues, with austere, Buñuelesque black comedy, the paradoxes of time-travel.

Bumbling farce gives way to existential horror as the deeper implications of the process reveal truths about desire, identity, fate, and death that make Héctor a man wise before his time.

Related: Review: Friday the 13th (2009), Review: The Haunting in Connecticut, Review: Drag Me To Hell, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Poor Hector, time travel, Horror
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
Comments

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS  |  November 24, 2009
    Nicolas Cage is at his best in Bad Lieutenant
  •   REVIEW: THE ROAD  |  November 24, 2009
    John Hillcoat doesn't stray from Cormac McCarthy's Road For those who found the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men too lighthearted, John Hillcoat's relentlessly faithful version of the author's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer-winning novel might hit the spot.
  •   INTERVIEW: NICOLAS CAGE  |  November 24, 2009
    "When people like to label any kind of performance as over the top, I suggest that if you were to go to the Guggenheim and look at a Francis Bacon, would you call that over the top?"
  •   REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR. FOX  |  November 25, 2009
    In The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson excelled at telling adult stories with childlike whimsy. Telling children’s stories with adult whimsy is another matter.
  •   SWINE FEVER: AN EVENING WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON  |  November 24, 2009
    Only Hunter S. Thompson could come up with a line like that; no one else had his knack for the near-Biblical proverb. Few writers outside of Madison Avenue or the New Testament can sum up a zeitgeist so cannily in a phrase.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group