Predestination

An irresistibly sexy flick during which I felt extreme anticipation for a carefully concealed and emotional point that would further confirm its cleverness. Instead, however, it becomes an endless loop in which everything possible is overwrought and it thus remains “only” a sexy flick that’s nicely paced and spectacularly shot with an interesting story. (20.01.2024)

What came first; eggs, chicken or rooster? School through play or in other words an introduction to the world of time paradoxes in illustrative practice, in which the creators do not make the viewer feel like an idiot and very soon leave the game to present a big point, because they know that you know anyway; after all... You have seen the name, right? The only problem is that the whole smartly well-thought and described "circle paradox" (or Novik's principle of self-consistency, if you want) denies itself (!mild spoilers follow!) by those stupid newspaper clippings. Because if in the past, there will be newspaper articles from the future that never happened, then all the unchanging predestination of the above paradoxes in the personal line is kind of upside down, right? (25.11.2014)

Here even the word “paradox” falls short… In other time-travel films, time paradoxes are obstacles that the filmmakers try to overcome to no avail, and which fully manifest once the viewer begins to question the logic of the story, but in Predestination, the paradox is the alpha and the omega of the story. The creators carefully build it, almost trying to make it as paradoxical as possible. (25.11.2014)

The bar conversation is so brilliant you forget you're watching a sci-fi about time travel. Then the action starts, and if you have already seen a few films like this, you'll start to get an idea of what the brothers will try to pull on you at the end. I could have been annoyed at them maybe even more, but the fact that they actually keep it pretty low-key the whole time and everything is dealt with in a rather non-violent way with clever dialogues makes me go quite high with my rating in the end. (08.07.2015)

Sitting at the bar with a shorter haircut telling her story, Sarah Snook looks like a young DiCaprio in the 'pre-Titanic' era, and not only does she look it, she gives a similarly fantastic performance. The entire first hour, its narrative, offers one of the most interesting passages the film world has delivered in the last year. Unfortunately, though, when the cards are laid on the table, the only thing left to play with are the temporal paradoxes so beautifully parodied in the Back to the Future trilogy. It's a great shame because a lot of potential was wasted. (05.01.2015)