Once the domain of mad scientists, scholars, and forlorn lovers, cinematic time travel has evolved exponentially in the last one-hundred years. The idea of moving forwards or backwards in time to change or alter events lends itself to all kinds of mind-boggling movie shenanigans, but how often are you truly entertained by what you see?
When depicted with an air of levity (think Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure or any given Terminator movie), the often chaotic moving parts found in time travel movies can be a welcomed form of sci-fi escapism, with the many compounding elements playing as an absurdist take on the genre’s pulpier aspects.
On the other hand, movies like 2004’s Primer or Christopher Nolan’s indecipherable Tenet from 2020 outline the complexities of time travel with such focused sobriety that all the fun is sucked clean out, only to be replaced with a dull gray mush.
But there is a middle ground. Existing somewhere between the silliness of Back to the Future II and the ground-breaking creativity of La Jetée is Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, a rowdy and wildly imaginative entry into a crowded genre that very often either takes itself way too seriously, or not seriously enough.
At just over an hour long, and cleverly stylized to appear as if it was filmed in one continuous shot (it wasn’t, but Yamaguchi and his crew do a hell of a job making you think it was), Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes wastes no time getting straight to the point.
It doesn’t matter how or why Kato’s (Kazunari Tosa) bedroom computer monitor shows what will happen two minutes into the future, or that the television in the café downstairs shows two minutes into the past, it only matters that it does, and that he and his friends will undoubtedly use this newly discovered phenomena to great effect.
And what an impressive effect it is. Yamaguchi wisely uses every precious second to keep things moving in an endlessly entertaining way, managing to plausibly squeeze in a heist, a love story, and a thorough explanation of just what a “Droste effect” is.
On a budget that must be a micro-fraction of even the most paltry of Hollywood productions, and with a runtime nearly as scant as an episode of Quantum Leap, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes achieves much more than it should, and does so with a ton of style and heart. It’s proof positive that time travel films don’t have to be full of smug, high-minded concepts or nonsense techno-babble to be worthwhile.
Maybe Christopher Nolan will take note and save himself a few hundred million dollars next time around. Oh, who am I kidding? No, he won’t.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.