Predestination

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)

The timing remains on a minimalist plane for an incredibly long time. It plays on dialogues, the power of the gaze, and Sarah Snook's fascinating performance. And given how Ethan Hawke revels in conversations, the rest of the running time logically begins to flag despite its unrelenting tension. Which doesn't matter as much as it might seem – of course, only if the viewer is able to engage in the game the screenplay presents. Many betrayals can be sensed from the opening scene, but the barrage of twists that Michael and Peter Spierig start throwing in towards the end truly takes your breath away. Perhaps the next viewing will reveal if this predestined violin case is really an all-encompassing appetizer that pleasantly unsettles with its blend of unconventional romance, uncompromising sci-fi, and unusual editing – or if it gets tangled up in the constantly escalating series of plot twists. (06/01/2015)

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)

A sci-fi story full of temporal paradoxes, whose highlight is the first half marked by a retrospective narrative of an extraordinary human destiny. If the whole film were as gripping and atmospheric as this opening passage, which gave me pleasant chills just by the beautifully matched shots of the faces of the two discussing characters, it would be an absolute and unprecedented hit. But the last thirty minutes not only made my head too muddled with all the time shifts, but also completely disrupted the existing harmony of the narrative, which up until then had made me purr with unconcealed bliss. It's as if the Spierigs wanted to convey an awful lot, but while I bought and believed it at the beginning, by the end I was barely listening. Great shame. 70% (08/07/2015)

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)