Timecrimes

Very cool.

The key here is to keep things moving without letting the logical (or illogical) complications weigh down the action, and [director] Vigalondo does this well.

The director operates his metaphysical contraption with enough wit to jolt away your skepticism.

The modest satisfactions of Timecrimes come down to a protagonist divided against himself.

Timecrimes is like a temporal chess game with nudity, voyeurism and violence, which makes it more boring than most chess games but less boring than a lot of movies.

The idea isn't bad, and Vigalondo makes the pretzel logic of the situation lucid, but he doesn't have the chops to give the tale the suspense and humor it needs.

Hector's insane time-travel journey is an excellent example of high-concept sci-fi.

Watching "Timecrimes" is like stumbling in a pitch-black haunted house. Hitting walls where paths should be is fun, and time-travel tropes of choice versus fate are inventively goosed. Even with five minutes left, it could conclude in any number of ways.

The idyllic but mundane world of the film's opening segues smoothly into a sequence out of a highly intelligent slasher film, before finally settling into its niche as a darkly funny, and at times mildly disturbing, sci-fi thriller.

That rarest of rare things: an intelligent time-travel movie that actually holds together on closer examination.

While I enjoyed the film a great deal, I honestly wonder if there'd be this amount of hoopla if the picture, say, starred a yamhead like Val Kilmer and was set in New Jersey.

A smart, occasionally thrilling science fiction tale...