Predestination

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)

It's driving me crazy. This whole film is a paradox, its plot was probably never written... And yet it was filmed... Or wasn't it? Wow... The first fifty minutes are a great spectacle and so much emotion is hard to see in science fiction (I remembered Gattaca), but the rest, which gradually leads to the long-awaited and very blatantly hinted at point, unfortunately has to layer one "shocking" paradox on top of another in order to cover it up. The result is a time-traveling science fiction stew that leaves you with a great desire to see it again and a great fear that it will be even worse the second time around. Three and a half. (28/09/2015)

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)

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)

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)