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Time Code
Screen Gems


6.2

based on 32 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for drug use, sexuality, language and a scene of violence

Starring Saffron Burrows, Salma Hayek, Stellan Skarsgård, 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.

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Mike Figgis
DIRECTED BY:	Mike Figgis
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 10, 2000 Video: October 10, 2000 Theatrical: April 28, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	97 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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...

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A voyeur's delight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

The movie world could use more stunts as entertaining and innovative as this one.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A clever way of providing crucial layering and heightening a hip, satirical take on bad old Hollywood ways.

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This is a big, audacious stunt of a movie -- pointless, perhaps, but incredibly fun to play with.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It would be even more impressive if the story and characters lived up to the inventive techniques, though.

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I'm glad I saw the film. It challenged me.

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.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Like a good supermarket tabloid, Time Code grabs - and keeps - our attention.

Film.com Gemma Files

A fascinating combination of dare, stunt and genuine artistic risk -- often disorganized, but never less than entertaining.

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.

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.

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It induces a serious case of sensory overload that left me drained and edgy.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Just fascinating in an empty, trendy sort of way

Time Richard Corliss

This spectacle of strenuous improvising is more stunt than true experiment.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

I suspect that Time Code was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

But for all the meta-movie excitement, the content danced somewhere between mildly interesting and moderately enjoyable.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Gimmicky artifice.

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.

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.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A brain-cramping and eye-straining experiment in digital filmmaking.

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Even with sex, drugs, hip-hop and a murder, these four stories are dull, dull, dull, dull.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

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Time Code Screen Gems

Time Code
Screen Gems