Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes)

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Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes)

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Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes)

Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Juan Inciarte, Nacho Vigalondo

Hector (Karra Elejalde) is relaxing on a lawn chair outside of his new country home, surveying the nearby hillside through a pair of binoculars, when he catches sight of what appears to be a nude woma...( read more  read more... )n amidst the trees. Hiking up to investigate, he is attacked by a sinister figure whose head is wrapped in a grotesque, pink bandage. Fleeing in terror, he takes refuge in a laboratory atop the hill, where a lone attendant (director Nacho Vigalondo) ushers him in to a peculiar scientific contraption. He emerges what seems to be moments later, only to find that he has traveled back hours in time, setting in motion a brain-twisting, horrifying chain of events when he inadvertently runs into himself.

Id: 10970622

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Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) Recent Reviews
  • RCCLBC
    July 31, 2009
    RCCLBC
    Don't be put of by the fact that this appears to have been made for Spanish television, there is nothing "tv" about this film.

    A simple but exceptionally well done tale of time travel and all of the repercussions involved with screwing up the natural order of things. Even whe...( read more)n you've only traveled back an hour!

    It was fun to watch all of the intricate pieces of this puzzle fall into place, often with some very clever and unexpected twists. And I love the fact that they were able to do it so well, without any of the trappings of a big budget production.

    All things considered...a very solid piece of work.
  • DrZeek
    July 3, 2009
    DrZeek
    Clara: Time flies here.

    A tightly plotted, yet easy to understand time travel thriller. Its fast paced, exciting, and fresh, with problems that could only hurt your experience if you hold it against the film.

    A man sits in the backyard of his house, sees something in the dista...( read more)nce, inspects it, gets attacked, retreats to a mysterious building, only to be transported back in time. He must then perform a number of activities to make sure this process repeats itself.

    This is an oversimplification of the plot because its much better to see what is actually playing out. The film starts off quite intense actually and while it may have some scenes that eventually give both the main character and the viewer some deja vu, as well as seem predictable, the movie manages to move by so quickly and presents enough of a clever story that if your into it, you shouldn't mind.

    I'm always a fan of dissecting time travel logic and this movie certainly doesn't get away with being perfectly reasonable, but the way its constructed is effective and the everyman quality of Hector is very suitable to the film. Also, in this movie, time travel once again proves to have consequences.

    Hector: Hello? Its Hector 3.
    Scientist: Who?
    Hector: The last one.
  • ceWEBrity
    May 31, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    Clever, entertaining little low-budget flick. Nothing too deep or thoughtful though. It's like Primer's dumb, fun younger brother.

    Also it was really difficult for me to get into this because the main character was SO. FUCKING. STUPID. Holy shit. I can't even express how angry w...( read more)atching him made me. He just...didn't get it.

    For such an interesting little flick, I could probably say more, but its clever causality plays and time traveling jaunts honestly don't amount to much. Temporal distortion ain't nothin' to fuck with.

    Maybe when I grow a brain I'll write more.
  • Beefy
    April 6, 2009
    Beefy
    Less of a head scratcher than Primer, this one starts out easily enough but demands attention towards the end. It was nice watching a mentally stimulating film, but I found myself wondering frequently why the main character would bother trying to do the things he would do. Over...( read more)all it's fun but overhyped.
  • EarthlyAlien
    March 13, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    Héctor: "Who is the man in my house?
    The Scientist; He's you.
    Héctor: He's me?
    The Scientist; Technically you're the same person. He's like your reflection. You're looking in the mirror. Only this mirror shows what you were doing
    roughly about an hour ago.    ...( read more)
    Héctor: But that man is in my home!
    The Scientist; And he'll leave, in the same way you did."

    Photobucket

    Fans of Shane Carruth's mind-bending Sundance-winner Primer, as well as time-travel enthusiasts/freaks in general, should be first in line to see Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes. This genre-jumping, expertly designed thriller, at first set up as a horror tale before moving into different unforeseeable directions, is less cryptic and pretentious than the aforementioned American indie, while still demanding attention be paid in order to wrap one's mind around its intricacies. In return is a craftily satisfying and wholly absorbing experience.

    Héctor (played by the great and underrated Spanish actor Karra Elejalde) and Clara (Candela Fernández) are a happily married couple still fixing up the country home they have recently moved into. When Clara heads into town to run errands, Héctor's lawn chair relaxation in the back yard is cut short when, through his binoculars, he spots a naked woman in the woods staring back at him. Going to investigate, Héctor is accosted and stabbed by a psychopath with a head wrapped in stained bandages. He narrowly escapes to a nearby gated laboratory where a scientist (Vigalondo) closes him in a dome-like contraption. When Héctor reemerges, he discovers that he has gone back in time by about an hour and a half. Spotting a copy of himself - "Héctor 2," as the scientist labels him - still sitting in his yard in the lawn chair, Héctor is suddenly thrust into an unthinkable situation where he must evade his other self while making sure that the same events occur so that, once again, there will only be one of him in the world.

    Films dealing with the time and space continuum - i.e. The Time Machine, the Back to the Future trilogy, Donnie Darko - are usually fascinating, but not always easy to pull off. As with any film involving time-travel, there are small details that don't quite hold up to scrutiny, but Timecrimes does a superb job in its attempt to fill in most of the holes. Shot on a low-budget and with only four characters, Vigalondo's impressive work is a study in minimalism even as the narrative is labyrinthine in the circuitous loop it finds itself within. While difficult to go into too many details - this is one film that the less a first-time viewer knows about it, the better - it should be said that there comes to be a third (and possibly fourth) version of Héctor all existing in the same 90-minute time frame. Running into each other, or making one false step, could spell a disastrous paradox.

    Before the time-travel material enters the equation, Timecrimes has a thirty-minute first act that works deliciously as a trippy, scare-filled horror film. Héctor's run-in with the bandaged mystery man in the forest is nightmarish enough, but a sequence where he must make his way up a lighted path amidst the darkness, his only knowledge of where the killer is reliant on the information he receives from the scientist via a walkie-talkie, is utterly chilling in a grasp-the-armrest sort of way. The second and third acts are more technical than emotional, with the stakes raised and time wrapping back around on itself again and again, but no less gripping. The use of the Blondie song, "Picture This," during a few key moments exquisitely adds to the atmosphere.

    The ending resolves Héctor's plight to a point while leaving a couple unanswered questions - like the matter of a dead body - hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, Timecrimes manages to be intellectual as well as never less than entertaining. The story is ingeniously mounted, too, and the tricky cinematography by Flavio Martínez Labiano is both dynamic and menacing. For all the geeks out there who believe in time-travel, Timecrimes is a great, thrilling little flick to be watched more than once.

    Oh, and if you have the slightest interest in the film, please, do try to watch it before the Yank remake washes in your shore. And by the way, if you like it, get a glimpse of Vigalondo's great Oscar-nom short 7:35 in the Morning. It's great stuff, and I'm sure it's on YouTube, everything is.
  • jonnycrumley
    December 10, 2009
    jonnycrumley
    Timecrimes is an intelligent thriller that keeps you guessing the whole way through, even though you knew exactly what's going to happen. The story's simplistic plot made it feel believable, as it never got daft or over the top. Timecrimes was a pleasant surprise and definitely w...( read more)orth checking out.
  • Nenebelle
    December 8, 2009
    Nenebelle
    Recommended by iamthethinman and scottydgibbs.
  • danmulhall1
    December 1, 2009
    danmulhall1
    Would have been a lot better if more than half the things the characters did made any rational sense at all.
  • scottydgibbs
    November 29, 2009
    scottydgibbs
    exellent film, a man, enjoying a piecefull day at his countryside home, spots a naked girl in woods behind house, he investigates, and is atacked by a masked man, he runs, and comes across a lab, and generously a lab tec helps him out, and hides him, but what apears to be a time ...( read more)machine, he comes back out, a few hours before. and so begins a great story and plot devices, just like marty in back to the future 2, has to put right, andalso set up events to guide his other self to carry on timeline, and from there a great adventure, great suprises, and not at all complicated, great scenes again seen from other him, filling in all the mysteries, set up before, this grabbed me from beginning to end, with great central performances, the film never gets stupid, or over top, as even though itstime travel, the situations seem real, a superb, film anda exellent suprise
  • filmguy450
    November 19, 2009
    filmguy450
    Stunning and staggering! A masterpiece.
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