Excellent Adventures: The Time Travel Movie Podcast

059: J'taime J'taime (1968): An Excellent Adventure

Ellen, Paul and James take on Je t’aime, je t’aime, Alain Resnais’s unsettling and deeply original twist on time travel.
A man agrees to take part in an experiment that will send him one year into the past for one minute. It goes wrong. Instead of returning safely, he is pulled through fragments of his own memories, especially moments from a complicated relationship, replayed out of order and slightly differently each time.
In this episode, the team explore how Resnais turns a simple science fiction premise into a study of memory, regret and repetition, and ask whether this is really a film about time travel at all, or about being stuck with the past.

058: Mr Nobody (2009) & Toto the Hero (1991): A Mini Excellent Adventure with Guest Dr Jamie Steele

In this Mini Excellent Adventure, Ellen is joined by special guest Dr Jamie Steele, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Bath Spa University, to explore two distinctive visions of time, memory, and identity in Belgian cinema: Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr Nobody and Toto the Hero.
Together they discuss how both films approach time travel not through machines or paradoxes, but through memory, imagination, and the shifting perspective of a life remembered.
Dr Jamie Steele is the author of Francophone Belgian Cinema (Edinburgh University Press) and writes widely on French-language cinema, transnational film culture, and Belgian filmmaking. Alongside his academic work, Jamie curates and hosts the Peacock Cinema Podcast, featuring conversational discussions and guest insights connected to films screened at the Peacock Cinema in Dunfermline.

057: River (2023): An Excellent Adventure

It's time to relax & take in the mountain air with Paul, Ellen & James as they enjoy watching the same 2 minutes repeat over & over for the staff of a winter ryokan and restaurant in Kibune, Kyoto.
A Japanese comedy film directed by Junta Yamaguchi, written by Makoto Ueda, and starring Riko Fujitani. 

056: We're Back! A Dinosaur Story (1993): A Mini Excellent Adventure

1993 was the year not of one but two dinosaur movies from Steven Spielberg. The first was Jurassic Park (in a sense  maybe the DNA was a time travel device…) and the second movie is a much lesser-known title in Spielberg’s filmography as producer; namely We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story. Adapted from a book by Hudson Talbot, this animated movie (produced by the Amblimation studio that was established in London in 1989) tells the story of time travelling dinosaurs who find themselves transported to late 20th century New York. Comic adventures ensue as does a slightly more menacing scenario involving a circus. A playful and bright cel-animated movie, We’re Back! deserves discovery if animated time travel movies are your particular interest and if you’re a completist in relation to Spielberg’s dino-movie productions. 

055: Field of Dreams (1989): An Excellent Adventure

Field of Dreams is a landmark fantasy / sports movie that was released in spring of 1989 across the US. It arrived in the UK late that same year.
An adaptation of W.P.Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, the movie proved to be very popular in America and found an appreciative audience overseas. 
Amidst the story’s richly expressed Americana, and its strain of fantasy and whimsy, the overarching character stories are convincingly explored and presented. Whatever else the film might be, it’s an affecting family drama. 
Elegantly filmed, with appealing performances from its cast, Field of Dreams continues to enjoy recognition and popularity as a piece of Americana with international appeal. 
As a fantasy movie, Field of Dreams offers up a satisfying time-travel story element that feeds into the emotional, and perhaps even melodramatic, quality of the movie. 

054: The DeLorean Time Machine: A Mini Excellent adventure with Guest Matt Peerless

Paul invites longest-serving chum & model builder extraordinare Matt Peerless to chat about the time machine of Back to the Future: the DMC DeLorean sports car.
They discuss its history as a collectible, the versions across the trilogy & what makes the car the Star!

053: Tomorrowland (2015): An Excellent Adventure

A somewhat forgotten, lavishly produced science fiction road trip movie, Tomorrowland (2015) owes much to the folklore around Walt Disney and Disneyland. An adventure story about a trek to reach Tomorrowland, the movie has its time travel / time warping element to it as protagonists Frank, Casey and Athena embark on a journey that explores the value of pursuing dreams, the dynamic between humans and technology, past / present and future and the ever-appealing idea of rocketeering through the skies by virtue of a rocket backpack.
Directed by Brad Bird, Tomorrowland is a heartening movie that sits well with Bird's earlier films Ratatouille and The Iron Giant

052: A Samurai in Time (2023): A Mini Excellent Adventure

In this mini excellent adventure, Ellen and her mum Joy dive into Samurai in Time, a film that blends some of their favourite cinematic flavours: slick swordplay, time-travel twists, and a peek behind the curtain of the film industry. Recorded on the drive home from Chichester Cinema at New Park, after a screening presented by the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme in 2025.
Links:https://www.jpf-film.org.uk/ https://chichestercinema.org/