LOLA

Odd little found footage film. These kinds of films tend to be a mixed bag, to put it mildly, but this one is a little bit inventive taking place in the past with two women who invent a mechanism that can see into the future and at first it's great fun. However, they then see a war coming and they interfere and it changes events as is usually the case when one plays around with time. While this is a little unusual and well acted, it's also extremely illogical, but you can have some fun with it if you don't take it too seriously. This is an ultra low budget film that has two very good female leads in Stefanie Martini & Emma Appleton who are both new to me. I also thought Rory Fleck Byrne. This is super short!

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OK not travel but viewing into the future, then making decisions in the present based on future knowledge.

My 7/10 is generous, I know, but that's for what the filmmakers achieved at the budget point and for a compelling idea. Historical future fiction is a weakness of mine, and whilst this isn't Azimov, it manages to get the time travel aspects "right" in-universe. Nothing annoys me more than a film which sets up rules then breaks them.

Another (very different) modest budget British time travel film which gets its timeline "right" which viewers may wish to try is "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel".

Caught this at the 75th EIFF, very clever and inventive piece of micro-budget SF, presented almost as documentary using footage discovered in old movie reel tins in a deserted house in England, purporting to document a pair of eccentric sisters created Lola, a machine which can intercept. Broadcasts from the future. It starts as fun, but as the war comes to Britain, Lola's trajectory changes radically.

Some of the film was shot on period cameras, developed in a rougher way to give the impression of damaged old film reels, while other footage uses newsreels, edited to include characters (a la Forrest Gump) or events, while the story also brings into play the nature of personal responsibility and the potential consequences of interfering with history. In many ways it reminded me of Primer, now a cult film, which I first saw at the same film festival years ago.

Love a good time conundrum, though most are a bit of a letdown.

This, however, was a bit of fun, and I did appreciate the obvious effort put into both the genuine Newsreel edits and the prop-builds.

Not surprisingly, there's a bit of "It's the 40's" pomposity, but that seems to be a common denominator of many period films.

A few anachronisms (namely using a camera which was not released until 1952, and which was as noisy as a chaff-cutter!), but overall, a bit of fun.

Annoying as they were, the characters fit the found-footage stage play feel quite convincingly, particularly the character of the soldier who discovers where they are.

Clever, and not reliant on grandiose effects (which tend to put me off...).

Worth a look, when you have a free hour or two.

Wonderful!

We're told it's all going to go wrong -- that is no spoiler -- and it's intriguing to wonder exactly how things will go wrong. (There's a short headline in a newspaper which gives a hint of what might go wrong.)

One of the strengths of the screenplay is that everything goes perfectly right -- ignoring one hiccough -- for the first 30 minutes. We need to see just how wonderful their invention is, so we're fully emotionally engaged when things start to go wrong.

The wartime footage is used very effectively. Stefanie Martini gives an excellent performance as Martha. And it's strange to think that Spandau Ballet might never have existed.