Films to stream

Last summer’s biggest blockbuster, Tenet, had a time-twisting story premise that made for hypnotic action scenes combining backwards and forwards motion. Here are some other fine films in which Chronos moves in mysterious ways:

Back to the Future Two of the biggest hits of the 1980s were time travel films – The

Terminator, among the decade’s darkest blockbusters, and this witty jaunt, as charming now as on first release. Michael J. Fox stars as a small-town teen who is zapped back to the 1950s.

Live Die Repeat: Edge of

Tomorrow Perhaps the most charming of time-twisters is

Groundhog Day, the 1993 romcom in which Bill Murray repeatedly relives a single day. This rollicking 2014 action flick borrows that premise, but in this case, it is Tom Cruise stuck in a 24-hour loop, in which he battles aliens with Emily Blunt.

Looper Rian Johnson’s 2012 mind-bender stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a looper

– an assassin living in the 2040s, whose targets are sent from the 2070s, when secretly disposing of dead bodies is more difficult than time travel. Things get complicated when his future self, played by Bruce Willis, is beamed in for execution.

Predestination Based on Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 short story All You Zombies, this 2014 thriller stars Ethan Hawke as a government agent who travels in time to prevent crimes. It’s engagingly weird and labyrinthine, and further lifted by a brilliant turn from Sarah Snook as Jane/John, Hawke’s genderbending new recruit.

Arrival Amy Adams plays a linguist drafted in by the US government to communicate with alien newcomers to Earth and avert world war in Denis Villeneuve’s gripping but unusually delicate and reflective 2016 blockbuster, with time travel elements.