Predestination

Based on Robert Heinlein's classic short story "All You Zombies," sibling Australian directors Michael and Peter Spierig's Predestination is a deviously clever film wrapped in time-travel paradoxes. Ethan Hawke is an agent for the Temporal Bureau who poses as a bartender while trying to capture a serial bomber and encourages a young man (played by actress Sarah Snook) to tell his unusual and dramatically tragic life story: born and raised a girl, “she” later underwent sex reassignment surgery due to medical complications. While his/her story unfolds in linear fashion initially, the film eventually circles back to reveal a complicated pattern of a life lived in overlapping eras, crossing paths in ways that send the storyteller down a road that seems fated. The human drama and the slow revelation of a connection shared by the two strangers in the bar gives the film its bruised heart. Science fiction fans in particular will appreciate the plot's mind-bending ingenuity. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include “A Journey Through Time” production featurette (5 min.), bloopers (2 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is the “Bringing Predestination to Life” making-of documentary (76 min.). Bottom line: a solid extras package for a smart sci-fi puzzler.] (S. Axmaker)