Needle in a Timestack

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.

Look story was good but it should of explained more about time travel and how they were able to do it. This movie is a LOVE STORY NOTHING ELSE so if you are looking for Sci fi or time travel it's not that. It's about love and how true love can outstand anything no matter what it is even time travel. Worth a watch.

Needle in a Timestack (2021) is a movie my wife and I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a futuristic society where rich people can pay to go back in time and relive, see and experience other eras. Unfortunately sometimes they change the future, on purpose or by accident. Two men who used to be friends aren't so much any more after one of the friends marries the other's ex-wife. The rich friend is perceived to be trying to change the past to get his ex-wife back while the married friend is obsessed with the notion whether true or not which may be causing his marriage to fall apart.

This movie is directed by John Ridley (Cold Around the Heart) and stars Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night in Miami), Orlando Bloom (Lord of the Rings), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) and Ulka Simone Mohanty (Soul).

This picture has a fantastic cast that is unfortunately under utilized. The movie has great dialogue and a unique premise. The characters are good and the circumstances are clever; unfortunately the overall execution is bad. There's too much focus on Odom's character looking lost and confused and not enough on the La Jolla friendship, the various back stories, and characters are used in an in-and-out fashion rather than a good mix of using them all together to understand the relationships, inner demons and why things are how they are. The ending is just okay and also could have been better.

This is a film with a lot of potential due to the great cast and premise but is executed poorly. I would score this a 5.5/10 and recommend watching once if nothing better is available.

This movie is before all a love story. A touching one. One that you can relate probably after you pass some age.

I liked the line "every love story changes the life lines of many people". This was the idea of the movie. It's unsettling. I also prefer to believe love is unique for everyone. That we all have a soul mate. But we may as well have more than one. Maybe one is more optimal than the other, maybe one is "a bigger love", maybe not. I don't know. Nobody knows. But we all know there is life after love and that life sometimes continues with another love.

So I think this is what the movie is exploting. Is it a good sci fi? Of course not. But it's a good love story. It's well executed. I like that it's slow and gentle. It has its own style and proper pace. I scrolled some of the slower moments, but as a whole, I think it's a good thing to watch. It poses interesting questions. The actors are good. The music is good. I like it. Maybe it's not for everyone, but to me, it has its charm.

A pretty authentic movie in which time travel is an every-day thing and anything can change if it's misused. Sure the movie is maybe too slow, but it's still pretty interesting. There is a character development and switching between alternative timelines (living through different outcomes), yet the main focus is on the drama and romance itself. It's not a 3~/10 movie, give it a shot. Clearly something different and refreshing than copy paste like most movies with same plot lines nowadays.