In the beginning of this pandemic with everyone stuck at home, people were heavily using streaming services to watch movies and TV as a way to pass the time indoors. For some, pandemic themed movies are what they wanted and those started shooting to the top of the most watched lists. Contagion, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys, and Outbreak all had a nice little resurgence. I was not interested, COVID was scary enough by itself and I wasn’t getting promised that guaranteed feel good Hollywood ending that they had.
As shelter in place, stay way from people, don’t go far recommendations persisted, a lot of days started to seem a lot like all the others. Almost like being stuck in a time loop and being doomed to repeat the same day over and over again. Seeing that I’m a sucker for time travel movies, this was the stuff I could watch.
I went back and rewatched Edge of Tomorrow. I also love Sci-Fi so this one is a favorite movie for me, and what’s not to love, Tom Cruise gets killed a dozens of times. Back in 2019 Netflix produced a little show called Russian Doll that used this Live, Die, Repeat1 trope as well. I watched it then and have recently rewatched it.
Because I just remembered it, today I went back and watched again something from another favorite of mine, The X-Files. Specifically Season 6’s Episode 14 entitled Monday, that involves Scully and Mulder2 and a bank robbery with the same we die and come back on the same day plot line.
In July Hulu premiered a new movie called Palm Springs with this theme as well, but puts a slight comic spin on it. It starred Adam Samberg and Cristin Milioti, but J.K. Simmons almost steals the show for me from the “guest star” role. It got a lot of well deserved buzz and I enjoyed it so much I watched it twice, about a month apart. Not to be left out of the temporal anomaly band wagon, Amazon Prime premiered The Map of Tiny Perfect Things just last month. This one is a sort of teen romantic comedy and it works. And for my money has the tidiest resolve of any of these things.
Speaking of rom-com time loop movies, this brings us around to the gold standard of this genre, Groundhog Day. Although I have seen this 1993 movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell movie a few times already, I think it is time to schedule a rewatch before too long. But first I’m off to Google “time loop movies” to see if I’m missing any hidden gems.