Time Travel, Telekinesis, Oh My!

We went to see the movie Looper last night, a movie by Rian Johnson, featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt...and Bruce Willis of all people!  As the The New York Times' review suggests, the movie is first and foremost about time travel.  I liked that it is set thirty years in the (near) future, which reminds me of Octavia Butler's novels.  Scientists say that this kind of time travel is not necessarily impossible either (except that whole thing about how the universe would collapse if you traveled into the past rather than the future).

There was some funny dystopian humor thrown into the mix too; about 10% of the population has a mutant Telekinesis gene (TK), but it's only powerful enough to allow people to perform tricks like circling coins in the air.  I respected these doses of humor since that can be hard to do (or worse, uninteresting) in a high suspense apocalyptic drama.

It's not only driven by suspense, the emotional drive of the film is rooted in pop-psychology notions of love in which most human violence stems from not getting enough love from Mom and Dad.   I don't want to give too much away in the movie, but the lack of mothers raising their children undergirds the logic of the plot.  That was a little over-stated for my liking, but it didn't make the film less enjoyable...in fact, the attempt at emotion (and an off-handed remark about an "affective" clothing choice) scored big points with me.  

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting was a big part of what I think made the movie work.  I've held a grudge against him for a while because of his role in 500 Days of Summer (I really did not like that movie, AT ALL), but after seeing Mysterious Skin and now this performance, I'm over it.  I think he's got some talent.

If you are interested in time travel, dystopia, or action flicks (or films about mommy and daddy issues?), I recommend it: