Top Time Travel Movies, Part 3

Star Trek (2009) / Director: J.J. Abrams / Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Bruce Greenwood, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Chris Hemsworth, Leonard Nimoy

Hot-blooded James T. Kirk tries is called upon to live up to his father’s legacy while teaming with cool Mr. Spock and other crew members to stop a vengeful, time-traveling Romulan (Bana) from destroying the Federation one planet at a time. In this reboot of the series with a new cast, young Spock (Quinto) in the 22nd century is united with old Spock (Nimoy) in the 23rd century, the later caught in a time-warping black hole along with villain Nero.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) / Director: Leonard Nimoy / Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan

Admiral James Kirk (Shatner) and his crew travel from the 23rd century back to the 20th in order to retrieve humpback whales, an extinct species in the future but the only beings that can communicate with whale-loving aliens who threaten to destroy Earth unless they can be convince otherwise. Some fun moments as the Enterprise crew visits trippy San Francisco.

Somewhere in Time (1980) / Director: Jeannot Szwarc / Writer: Richard Matheson, based on his novel Bid Time Return / Stars: Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer, Teresa Wright

Richard Collier (Reeve) is a playwright who hypnotizes himself to travel back to 1912 so he can find a beautiful actress named Elise McKenna (Seymour) he has fallen in love with across the distance of time. Her manager (Plummer) tries to derail the romance. A failure in its own time, the movie became a cult romantic favorite with fans who meet in period dress every year at the Grand Hotel in Michigan where it was filmed.

Nothing Left to Do but Cry (Non ci resta che piangere) (1984) / Directors: Roberto Benigni, Massimo Troisi / Stars: Massimo Troisi, Roberto Benigni, Iris Peynado, Amanda Sandrelli

A couple of school employees, Saverio and Mario, wander into the 15th century after getting lost in the Italian countryside.

Donnie Darko (2001) / Director: Richard Kelly / Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze

A terrifying-looking man-sized rabbit appears to a troubled teenager, who gets stuck in a parallel dimension after an engine falls off an airliner on October 30 and bizarrely crashes into his bedroom on October 2 (thus travelling back in time). An artful movie, but hard to follow. Great theme song: “Mad World”