Two dog-eared genres are given a turning over. By JACOB POWELL.

TALES of time travel naturally inspire musings about the possibilities of the future – usually including some sort of fitting silvery garb or the like – as well as fanciful adventures in the past where our foreknowledge and technological superiority often come into play. From the H. G. Wells classic The Time Machine, to Terry Gilliam’s absurdist Time Bandits, through to Robert Zemeckis’ 80s blockbuster Back to the Future trilogy, much of the time travel genre tends to cover large scale stories full of spectacular events and famous people. Not Timecrimes! Despite its somewhat misleading – though at the same time, perfectly apt – title, Nacho Vigalondo’s debut feature focuses in on the microcosm of small rural neighbourhood and one man, Hector (Karra Elejalde), who finds his life thrown into a surreal whirlwind one sunny afternoon. With his pair of binoculars and a lack of common sense on board, and not a famous person to be seen, Hector wanders into the woods in search of a topless lady he spied loitering within only to find that strange things are afoot at the Circle-K. Fleeing a violent attack he soon finds himself mixed up in a tangled web of... of... well, bizarreness.

The director also gets in front of the camera in the role of Chico, some kind of junior researcher doing some unauthorised weekend work at some kind of strange facility that Hector stumbles upon whilst running from his aforementioned attacker.

Though full of usual holes to pick at – i.e. ‘why would a person actually choose to do A when they could simply do B or C?’, or ‘if all of this was dependent on actions to be performed in a future timeline then how does it happen in the first instance?’ – Timecrimes is possessed of enough verve and mind-fuck twistedness to keep these thoughts at bay. More B-Grade in feel than arthouse, the film manages to explore some of the unavoidable quandaries that the notion of time travel presents without taking itself too seriously (a la The Butterfly Effect) or falling prey to any pretentiousness (as Donnie Darko occasionally does).

It may certainly be far from perfect, but Timecrimes, at the very least, entertains and surprises; serving up a generous portion of darkly surrealist nonsense. With a satisfying mix of tension and absurdity, Vigalondo has brought a fresh, lo-fi approach to a tired genre resulting in a movie that will be enjoyable to any one who enjoys having their head messed with.

Not so much absurdist (although it has its moments), Rupert Wyatt’s prison break thriller The Escapist also manages to get your head spinning, though this is more to do with the tightly framed shots of Wyatt and cinematographer Philipp Blaubach than a wildly spiralling plot structure. Utilising many close ups and emphasising the confined spaces the film plays out in, these two do an excellent job of giving the prison setting a very real claustrophobic feel which helps to maintain a level of tension that would be admired in much better films. The narrative structure of film compounds this feeling, switching between the escape in progress and the lead up to it, lending a nice sense of pace and urgency to the picture.

Like In Bruges, The Escapist is likely to be one of the Festival films that will have wide appeal for a Hollywood fed market. The movie follows prison lifer Frank Perry (a rare lead role for perennial supporting actor Brian Cox) who has not heard from his wife and child for at least the last 12 years. Quietly existing in this semi-life, he unexpectedly gets a reply – his first – to one of his letters, that have consistently been returned, informing him that his (now) 21 year old daughter (he hasn’t seen her since she was 7) is a drug addict who’s on a sure path to an early death, her heart having stopped twice due to drug overdoses. This news prompts Frank to want to see her before either of them escape their mortal coil and he becomes the eponymous escapist, organising a crew of prisoners to attempt a breakout on a short timeframe. He enlists the help of his long-time friend Brodie (Liam Cunningham) who has knowledge of the prison’s interior structure, a convicted thief with anger management problems, Lenny Drake (slightly over-played by Joseph Fiennes), and dreadlock sporting ‘chemist’, Viv Batista (Seu Jorge). As you might expect, all does not go quite as planned.

Performances, with the odd exception, are quite credible, constrained as they are within the stereotyped characters they are given. Like any good thriller, the plot weaves about a bit, which could be seen as inventive or cheesy depending on your mood, or point of view. Prison Break it certainly is not, getting its fingers a little more dirty, and presenting a plot with far more believable twists than the TV show it might partially resemble. Trading heavily on most of the prison movie clichés – the raping of the new young prisoner, carrying ‘shivs’, the prisoner-cum-boss who controls the flow of goods and services on the inside as well as some of the guards – The Escapist is not bringing anything new to the genre, however Wyatt and co. do manage to achieve moments of depth and beauty that stand out and lift the film enough to make it worth seeing.

The Escapist’s biggest problem is its director’s tendency towards over-exposition. For example: there is a scene where Frank gets a surprise visit from his estranged wife where she doesn’t actually speak to him but it is clear what she is trying to communicate. Wyatt can’t help but add an unnecessary explanatory add-on. This and other similar aspects (including a frequently heavy handed soundtrack) gets a little trying, but perhaps with a few more films under his hat the director may learn to have little more faith in his audience and a little less in the formulaic ‘rules’ of mainstream cinema.