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Time Code

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 6 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Mike Figgis
Directed by: Mike Figgis
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 28, 2000
DVD: October 10, 2000
Running Time: 97 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for drug use, sexuality, language and a scene of violence
Starring Saffron Burrows, Salma Hayek, Stellan SkarsgÄrd, and Jeanne Tripplehorn
Mike Figgis's boldly innovative movie, using entirely improvised dialogue, simultaneously shows the audience four separate digital "movies," directing the audience's attention by manipulating the volume within the shots. The four individual movies, each shot simultaneously in 93 minutes of "real time" and synchronized by a series of earthquakes, tell the story of the casting of a bizarre movie in a Hollywood film production company.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Cold Creek Manor Hotel Leaving Las Vegas Miss Julie The Loss of Sexual Innocence
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
An audaciously unique and exciting film, not as successful as an A-to-Z story as it is mind-expanding as a vision of what the cinema can do.
Read Full Review >Variety Dennis Harvey
If the satire feels familiar, and the dramatics often contrived, there's rarely a moment here when something funny, intense or cleverly interconnected doesn't keep one's synapses firing on overdrive.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly F. X. Feeney
We're afforded the illusion of an omniscience so complete as to mark a pioneering breakthrough in movie storytelling, one not to be missed.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
It's amazing to see a film so brazenly experimental, so committed to reflecting on the circumstances and techniques of its making, that is at the same time so intent upon delivering old-fashioned cinematic pleasures like humor and pathos, character and plot.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Marc Caro
The movie world could use more stunts as entertaining and innovative as this one.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
A clever way of providing crucial layering and heightening a hip, satirical take on bad old Hollywood ways.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Andy Klein
We become so absorbed in the ramifications of the techniques involved that a more challenging plot might have resulted in sensory overload.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
This is a big, audacious stunt of a movie -- pointless, perhaps, but incredibly fun to play with.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It would be even more impressive if the story and characters lived up to the inventive techniques, though.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Is the story being told worth a movie on its own merits? No way. Time Code exists as an esthetic event -- either a trick or a treat, depending on your expectations.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday
Once you get the hang of Figgis' own brand of coercion -- one based on an intricate sound design and musical score -- you find yourself happily going along for the ride.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
Like a good supermarket tabloid, Time Code grabs - and keeps - our attention.
Read Full Review >Film.com Gemma Files
A fascinating combination of dare, stunt and genuine artistic risk -- often disorganized, but never less than entertaining.
Read Full Review >Newsweek Andrea C. Basora
You may leave the theater with a bit of a headache, but you'll feel amply compensated by the sense of having seen a master inventor at work.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Richard T. Jameson
But for all its pretensions toward exemplifying a brave new way of making movies, Time Code offers less and less worth discovering as it slouches toward its tritely "fatal" climax.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Any (Specify)
Figgis's bold narrative strategy turns what could have been a standard-issue chronicle of shallow Hollywood lives into a fluid and enthralling experience.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It induces a serious case of sensory overload that left me drained and edgy.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
Just fascinating in an empty, trendy sort of way
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
This spectacle of strenuous improvising is more stunt than true experiment.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Amy Taubin
I suspect that Time Code was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
But for all the meta-movie excitement, the content danced somewhere between mildly interesting and moderately enjoyable.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
Story pitches are made. Coke is snorted. There is lesbian sex. Fellatio. An earthquake. A murder. Just another day in Hollywood.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
In fact, for long stretches, especially during the first hour, it's as soporific as watching a bank of security cameras.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Both a headache and a marvel, often eliciting simultaneous groans of despair and sheer wonder at the director's nervy chutzpah.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
An irrefutable triumph of engineering, and it entertained and intrigued me through two separate viewings...though as a view of the human condition it's astonishingly and depressingly meager.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
A brain-cramping and eye-straining experiment in digital filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Film.com John Hartl
Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Even with sex, drugs, hip-hop and a murder, these four stories are dull, dull, dull, dull.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.1 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
James H. gave it a6:
Rather strikingly unusual and daring. The most compelling scenes by far are the ones with Salma Hayak. It's an interesting experiment, it doesn't always work but I admire the effort.
Yoon Min C. gave it a 1:
Figgis the fungus. time code shows 4 simultaneous realities in four panels, challenging us to focus on the action ourselves. it's rather interesting in posing questions about the meaning of time imprisoned with subjective walls, reality obscured by physical and emotional barriers, and the limitations of what the director can convey and what we can absorb. but, beyond the gimmick it's nothing but four panels of equally excruciating boredom and irritation. one suspects figgis, having crappy material, disguised it in avantgardism. it's like food. if it's sh.t, then no matter how you serve it, it's sh.t.
Liam Z. gave it an 8:
Pretentious Rubbish.
Armadillo gave it an 8:
It has got a story. Four stories. Pay attention.
Marc D. gave it a 6:
Absolutely wild format. Now if they could just script a movie that has an actual story to go along with the technology, we'd be somewhere.
