Counter Clockwise

Filmmaker George Moise's time-travel yarn is a cause-and-effect mindbender in the tradition of 12 Monkeys and Donnie Darko, but done indie-style, with imagination on a low budget. A nebbish inventor (Michael Kopelow) who is working on the teleportation of living things crosses the wrong wire and ends up with a time machine. Experimenting on himself, he manages to land in his lab a few months into the future—only to find the complex closed down, his family shattered, and himself the object of a manhunt as a brutal mass-murderer. Trying to use the time machine to unravel what went wrong uncovers corporate conspiracies and criss-crossing timelines that may take a few repeat viewings to get straight. Eye-rolling, exaggerated performances by all but the bewildered leading man inject some rather discordant comedic elements, and there are some lapses of taste, but the filmmaker's raw enthusiasm and smart ideas shine through. Recommended. (C. Cassady)