Turns out it was just a purple syrup-y goop! When, in this film’s predecessor, Austin Powers’s sexual conquesting is chocked up to him being of “another time”-as in: You wouldn’t understand, Modern Woman it was another time and ladies just liked different kinds of dudes back then-here we see that certain je ne sais quoi in action. Evil (also Myers) back in time to prevent his arch nemesis from stealing his “mojo.” What’s probably most impressive about this sequel, other than its box office returns, is that it was able to successfully button up all questions about how Austin Powers, a goofy-looking man with almost no respect for women, would ever be able to pork every single bipedal organism he sets his sights upon. The second entry in the Austin Powers franchise follows the titular Powers (Mike Myers)-a man similar to most of pop culture’s international spies in that he has a lot of sex-as he coattails Dr. The film’s ending probably makes too literal a rather worthy symbolic theme throughout, yet Trevorrow’s balancing of heartfelt sweetness and existential anxiety makes him seem a much better fit as the director of the upcoming Jurassic World than many would give him credit for.Ģ8.

As Plaza’s intern grows ever closer to Duplass’s sad-sack misfit, joined later by an editor (Jake Johnson) and another fellow intern (Karan Soni), each character confesses his or her deep-seated failures-failures accompanied by the stark pain of knowing there is no way to return to the past and try again. Yet, in chronicling the strange courtship of a magazine intern (Aubrey Plaza) and the potentially delusional teddy bear (Mark Duplass) who claims he’s built a machine that will take the two back in time, director Colin Trevorrow slyly crafts an ode to the impulses that make time travel such an important part of pop culture. Granted, (spoiler alert) time travel really only shows up in the film’s closing minutes. If you ask us, Happy Death Day seems more like a one-and-done proposition, best left to stand on its own.

It’s hard not to question whether a sequel (already filmed, as of spring 2018) is really warranted or narratively feasible, given the time-looping nature of the original story, but that isn’t stopping director Christopher Landon from giving it the old college try. It’s an easygoing, not-too-gory entry into the smart-alecky slasher canon, but not a bad way to kill a weekend afternoon. Jessica Rothe is charming as protagonist “Tree” the film is by and large a bit funnier than it needs to be and it does a good job of drawing the audience in with the promise of an expected conclusion before pulling the rug out from beneath them in the last few minutes. Happy Death Day is the sort of film that is both propped up and constrained by its high-concept premise-you know within moments that it was pitched in a boardroom as “ Groundhog Day meets Scream,” and that a bunch of middle-aged white executives nodded accordingly and began appropriating funds and looking at headshots of attractive young women. Whether characters spend the whole film traveling to multiple times, or just talking about it, these films give insight into the fascinating facets of being human that drive us to believe in the impossible.Īlso, it’s worth noting: So many spoilers ahead. Is it possible to travel back through time and fix the wrongs we’ve wrought before-or will we just create more wrongs by messing with something we’re not meant to? With one of the all-time great time travel movies, Time Bandits celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, there is no better time (natch) to consider the genre’s formative films.

But in the case of popular media, the weird koan holds true: No matter how society progresses, or to what extent our technology matures, human beings are destined to repeat the same mistakes. “Time is a flat circle,” said Rust Cohle, talking about the fourth dimension-or something.

Movies about going back in time