Screens July 31 (opening night)
One of the most noticeable things about this stylish noir-inflected time-travel puzzler from Brisbane filmmaking brothers Peter and Michael Spierig is that it manages to be both futuristic and nostalgic at the same time. In fact, occupying more than one temporal slot at a time is right at the heart of the film, which stars Ethan Hawke as a mysterious barman-cum-agent and Sarah Snook as the narrator of a life story that crosses a whole bunch of other boundaries besides. It’s impossible to say much about the plot, which relies to some degree upon surprise twists for its impact, but this yarn – based on sci-fi legend Robert Heinlein’s short story All You Zombies – is never less than intriguing, even if it does threaten to unravel at the slightest tug on a thread of loose logic. Noah Taylor is dapper as a bureaucratic overlord at the mysterious Agency, and Hawke is as solid as ever, but it is Snook who really shines in what looks very much like a career-making role.
