TIMECRIMES

Already a lauded short film director, Nacho Vigalondo made his feature debut at Fantastic Fest in 2007 with this tense, unstoppable vision of science and natural law gone awry -- and we we've been completely smitten with the crazy Spaniard ever since. An incredibly well-crafted time-travel story, TIMECRIMES isn't loaded with expensive effects, although the visual style of the film is impressive. Instead, the layered science-fiction plot is created through fabulous writing and solid acting from a very small cast of characters. The feeling is something akin to a classic Twilight Zone episode --  taking a clever premise and bringing it to pulse-pounding but intelligent new heights. 

Oh, and the plot? Here's a rather cryptic synopsis of it from Vigalondo himself: "A man who accidentally travels back into the past and meets himself. A naked girl in the middle of the forest. A mysterious stranger with his face wrapped in a pink bandage. A disquieting mansion on the top of a hill. All of them pieces of an unpredictable jigsaw puzzle where terror, drama and suspense will lead to an unthinkable crime. Who's the murderer? Who's the victim?"