Weekend Watchlist | Time Travel

Grab your Police Box, DeLorean, hot tub or whatever else you want to use. This week, the Pitt News Staff is bringing you recommendations for shows and movies about time travel that you’ll want to relive over and over again.

About Time (Netflix) // Sinéad McDevitt, Digital Manager

“About Time” is a 2013 British romantic comedy about a man named Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) who’s from a family where the men just so happen to have the ability to go back in time and relive certain experiences.

The main thrust of the film, however, is about Tim’s relationships with the people around him, including his eventual wife Mary (Rachel McAdams), his free-spirited sister Katherine (Lydia Wilson) and his stern but distant father who also has the ability to travel through time (Bill Nighy). Tim’s actions predictably affect the people around them and at key moments Tim is forced to choose between his own happiness and that of those around him. The time travel aspect isn’t explained, but it doesn’t need to be. This isn’t a story about the intricacies of timelines, it’s a heartwarming story about living in the present and it’s a very relaxing watch as Tim gets the chance to do what most of us have wanted to do at one point or another: go back and fix his mistakes.

Loki (Disney+) // Kendall Swift, Staff Writer

This series follows an alternate version of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s lovable villain brother, immediately following the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” where he got the Tesseract and escaped after the events of the first Avengers rather than being sent back to Asgard. Loki is held as a captive of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a timeless organization dedicated to keeping the universe on one timeline.

Loki is in the custody of Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson). In exchange for an easier sentencing from the TVA, Loki works with Mobius to find an incredibly dangerous time variant. However, Loki slowly realizes that the TVA is not all that it seems.

Donnie Darko (YouTube) // Millicent Watt, Contributing Editor

This movie follows a troubled teenager, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), after he experiences a hallucination of Frank — a man in a spooky rabbit costume — who tells Darko that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. With the guidance of Frank and his other hallucinations, Darko navigates through his world of mental illness, teenage angst and first loves while also attempting to stop the world from ending. Viewers have to decide if Donnie is truly living in a parallel universe where the world may end or if it’s just all in his head. 

The movie is a great Halloween watch, and is classified as a thriller because of Frank’s appearance and the confusion and uneasiness it brings viewers. The first watch through of the movie may make it seem too disjointed and confusing, but I found watching an explanation video of the movie and then rewatching the movie helped me understand and appreciate its complexity. It’s confusing, but there’s a reason why people like it so much. Plus, the movie has a great soundtrack, too.