Timecrimes (2008): B

A shot out of a moving car’s rear window, and the subsequent one of purchased goods forming a cluttered trail on the ground after falling out of the vehicle’s trunk, subtly presages the messy consequences that follow an ordinary man’s binocular-gazing in Timecrimes. Nacho Vigalondo’s swift head-spinner concerns Hector (Karra Elejalde), who while staying at a country home with wife Clara (Candela Fernández) spies a naked woman in the woods behind his residence. Curious, he investigates, only to be stabbed in the arm with scissors by a man whose head is wrapped in pink bandages, which compels him to take shelter first in a house and, soon afterwards, in a nearby silo where a stranger convinces him to hide in a giant time machine. When Hector exits, it’s an hour earlier, a disorienting situation that prompts not much of a reaction from the newly christened time-traveler, yet nonetheless instigates a story that – like the circular pendant worn around the nude beauty’s neck – quickly, convolutedly begins doubling back on itself. Vigalondo’s story doesn’t strenuously entertain profound notions about the past, time, memory, or predestination, instead largely content to simply tie itself in ever more intricate knots at breakneck speed. The film’s plentiful complications aren’t necessarily unique (at least for anyone familiar with Philip K. Dick), but they’re given corkscrew verve by taut plotting and correspondingly fleet, no-nonsense direction that – even when unable to keep the film’s domino-ing developments wholly surprising – place a premium on compact, clever, vigorous genre thrills.