Needle in a Timestack

Excellent adaptation of the Silverberg original. Be prepared to leave this movie in the same way Silverberg leave you as a reader for many of his stories. Which is to say the direction and production has done its job well.

"Needle in a Timestack" should be viewed as a drama set in a science fiction background. If you think it's a science fiction film, you'll be bored. If you view it as a drama, it would be interesting, because it's about all the could haves and should haves in life. It is about the regrets and sorrows of life, and what you would do to change it if you could go back time.

The thing that impressed me the most is how realistic the future technology is. Very creepy in a Black Mirror way. It was a little slow, but NO WAY is it a 3.3 which is what the score is as I am writing this. I think that most people may see this as a love story, and this is how it seems at the beginning. But my interpretation of this movie is that technology is the antagonist here. No one can just live their life without someone interfering, and even though the message appears to be love will find a way in any circumstance, I see the real message is that technology that interferes by rewriting our past can cause a lot of pain and sorrow.

Time travel is happening. The rich are doing it. Whenever a time shift happens, everybody scrambles to check for personal changes before they lose their memory of the previous time line. Nick Mikkelsen (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Janine (Cynthia Erivo) are happily married. He is worried that her first husband Tommy Hambleton (Orlando Bloom) is trying to use time travel to eliminate their relationship. That's exactly what happens and he finds that he's married to his long-time girlfriend Alex Leslie (Freida Pinto).

This is an intriguing Twilight Zone premise. The film does need to use that premise in a compelling story. While I'm fascinating with the world-building, the movie fails to construct the story around it. It's like there's a great foundation but the building is not much more than a box. This is almost two hours but it's really only doing the first act. I wonder if the short story is worth a shorter flick. Maybe the story needs expanding.

This tells the story of a couple who are very much in love but are split up permanently and forget each other in the present by an ex who goes back in time.

The film isn't really about time travel. It's never really explained how it works or how people have come to just accept their lives regularly being altered by people messing around in the past.

This is all love story and if people can still be in love if they don't remember each other.

It's a bit slow and pretentious in places. I almost gave up after 5 mins. When I got to the end it felt more like achievement than satisfaction at a good film.

It really felt like it could have been much better done. It's hard to really care about the characters so you feel cold against what is happening instead of being drawn in and involved. It should be a film you discuss about after but it's just lacking in something.

It's worth a watch but it just really feels like it should have been a far bigger and better film. A waste as it's well acted and it's believable but not well executed.