1. Back to the Future
It’s hard to imagine a film more synonymous with blasting through time than this absolute classic of the genre. It’s 2015, and we’ve yet to see a time travel movie top this big-hearted staple of 1985.
2. Terminator 2
The first Terminator film deserves a lot of cred for kicking off our fascination with time-traveling doomsday robots. But the sequel, along with the fierce Linda Conner, kicks so much ass it makes the competition look like a pile of T-1000 metallic goo.
3. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, and it takes two rightous dudes with a love for Van Halen to navigate gnarly time paradoxes and save History Day at San Dimas High. Bill & Ted will always be excellent.
4. Donnie Darko
A demonic bunny mysteriously haunts Jake Gyllenhaal, while sketchy teachers and strange talk of cellar doors fill the hours at local schools. Time travel is also involved, in some some not-quite-comprehensible way, but it’s best to just let the movie’s bizarre tone wash over you. It’s a perfect sci-fi treat for Halloween, or any other night of the year you want to be creeped out.
5. 12 Monkeys
Bruce Willis finds himself in a mental institution, along with an amped-up conspiracy theorist played by Brad Pitt, in this oddball thriller. This film easily ranks as one of the best in Terry Gilliam’s uneven catalog. Is Willis on a mission from a dystopian future, hoping to prevent a deadly virus from wiping out humanity? Or is he just as delusional as his asylum associates?
6. The Terminator
In addition to putting Arnold Schwarzenegger on the action star map, the first Terminator film is also a “breathlessly kinetic, near-brilliant piece of metaphysical Ludditism,” according to author David Foster Wallace. If you like your time travel shootouts laced with intellectual subtext, The Terminator is ground zero for the explosion of the genre.
7. Groundhog Day
Most time-travel films sweep our heroes off to dystopian futures, or deep into iconic historical moments. Unfortunately for weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, he’s stuck traveling back in time to repeat the most boring day of his life. Over and over and over. As we follow Phil’s Sisyphean struggle against mundanity, Groundhog Day unfolds as one of the funniest and most inspirational films of all time.
8. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Often described as the anime film for people who don’t like anime, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a surprisingly moving tale of a teen who gains the ability to manipulate time. It’s an unexpectedly thoughtful coming-of-age story that offers a unique look at the unintended moral consequences of tinkering with fate.
9. Primer
Primer may take the crown for the most ambitious low-budget feature ever made. This indie film was produced for only $7,000. And yet, it deftly delves into the complicated branching timelines created when a pair of engineers accidentally make a time machine. Prepare to feel thrilled and confused in equal measure.
10. Edge of Tomorrow
It’s about time someone took the delightfully comic conceit of Groundhog Day and added breakneck futuristic warfare. Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise are on a suicide mission to defeat alien invaders. The catch: When they die, they awaken, again and again, at the beginning of the same day. With luck, they’ll learn from their past mistakes and survive for a moment or two longer. Don’t let the blockbuster effects fool you; Edge of Tomorrow is a smart roller coaster ride with a sardonic edge.
11. Looper
Just when you think every sci-fi concept has been wrung dry, Looper arrives with a fun twist. In the future, time travel is exploited to send targets back in time, where they’re met by contract killers, effectively enabling the “perfect crime.” Of course, it wouldn’t be a time travel film if there weren’t unpredicted consequences. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt star in this fascinating and futuristic game of cat and mouse.
12. Run Lola Run
This movie is in far too great of a hurry to stop and explain how its time travel works. Our red-headed heroine, Lola, races through endless miles of danger against a ticking clock to save her boyfriend’s life. It’s a kaleidoscopic collage of alternate timelines and catastrophic coincidences, and it never lets up across its 81 action-packed minutes.
13. Superman
Who would have guessed Superman’s greatest super power was actually time travel? In a ludicrous, but oddly rousing, last-ditch attempt to save a murdered Lois Lane, Superman flies around Earth at near relativistic speed, rewinding time, and setting right past wrongs. It’s both completely silly and triumphant at the same time.
14. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Save the whales! In the fourth Star Trek feature film, Kirk and Spock do just that. After a slingshot maneuver around the Sun flings the Enterprise into 1986, the crew follow the song of near-extinct humpback whales and transport the creatures to safety. You know you’ve got a charming cast when it can pull off the Free Willy of time-travel movies.
15. Back to the Future II
While the first Back to the Future focused on the recent past, Back to the Future II plunges Doc and Marty head first into a dystopian future ruled by holograms and hoverboard gangs. Its predictions of 2015 may have missed the mark, but the flick still makes for a hilariously campy re-watch.
16. Interstellar
Christopher Nolan’s recent outer space epic features Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts seeking a new home for humanity. The duo faces a host of time paradoxes with serious consequences for the people they love. Interstellar came nowhere near to living up to Nolan’s grand ambitions, but the movie is still alright, alright, alright.
17. Galaxy Quest
Galaxy Quest may have the tiniest use of time travel in any film: An Omega bomb sends Tim Allen a mere 13 seconds back in time in an attempt to save his murdered space crew. Galaxy Quest is a manic comedy sendup of cheesy sci-fi tropes, as well as a tribute to all the genre fans who love them.
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
It’s nearly universal: Most fans love Harry Potter’s third film the best, and it’s easy to see why. The Prisoner of Azkaban is a redemption story with stakes that feel real, thanks to the young cast’s growing acting chops. Harry and Hermione travel back in time in a race to stop the devious Dementors and right past wrongs.
19. Planet of the Apes
A planet where apes evolved from men? Yessir, Mr. Charlton Heston. That’s the warped future you landed in after your spaceship crew experienced time dilation. A cult classic that spawned seven sequels and spinoffs, Planet of the Apes is the monkey’s paw of time travel films, with an unforgettably iconic closing shot of a broken Statue of Liberty.
20. Source Code
Jake Gyllenhaal returns to the time travel genre with a movie about a personality-hopping solder trying to save a train from a terrorist attack. It’s both a fun detective story and a riveting action movie as JG winds back time, looking for the perfect clue. It’s also good palette cleanser after his recent turn as a creepy sociopath in Nightcrawler.
21. The Philadelphia Experiment
When a radar program goes awry, an entire naval destroyer gets sucked through time. Come for the fun nuclear physics, stay for the LSD-induced light show straight out of 2001.
22. Star Trek (2009)
Leave it to J.J. Abrams to turn what could have been complicated fan fiction into a grand adventure. He artfully split the canonical and new casts of Star Trek into alternate timelines that actually made sense. If only he could have used those skills to save the last few seasons of Lost.
23. Peggy Sue Got Married
This is a goofy and charming film featuring one of our most common fantasies: What if you could go back to high school for a do-over with your adult knowledge of the future? Watch it in a double feature with Back to the Future for a “his and her” time travel night in.
24. Time Bandits
A renegade band of time-traveling dwarves take an 11-year-old boy through a demented tour of history. The setup sounds like a bad trip at Burning Man, but Time Bandits is actually a highly inventive family film that went onto become Terry Gilliam’s first big hit in the US.
25. Flight of the Navigator
If you can remember Flight of the Navigator, you’re either ancient, or someone ancient made you watch it. When it came out in 1986, it had a sci-fi premise every kid could get behind: A child wakes up 8 years in the future and must commandeer an alien spacecraft to get back home. See you later, navigator!
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