The point here isn’t whether a movie is worth watching. If you throw a rock in Hollywood, you’ll hit a movie critic. Check them out for Hit the theater, Wait for streaming, or Avoid this stinking turkey.

What’s more interesting is WHY something is worth watching or skipping–and whether you’d watch it again.

Time-loop movies are fun in the same way zombie movies (early on) are a blast: no rules. Want to loot the gun store, then grab whatever you want from Safeway? Go for it.

That’s the promise of the premise. GROUNDHOG DAY is the most famous example of these movies because it does a great job of showing the wide variety of things that are possible. Bill Murray steals from an armored car, leads the cops on car chases, jumps off buildings, learns piano with his infinite time. It’s also fun to see Bill go through the same scenarios radically different way. I still laugh when he punches the insufferable Ned.

A MAP OF TINY PERFECT THINGS is a low-budget movie. No big stars, no amazing fights, no giant chase scenes, no CGI. Doesn’t matter. Entertaining as hell anyway. Why? Because of the story.

It’s not as varied as GROUNDHOG DAY in terms of what the do with unlimited time and zero consequences. There’s a little of that. What this movie focuses on is who you spend that time with, and not just in a romantic way. For once, this silly blog will not spoil the movie. But it’s not what you think, and I’d happily watch it again.

Now, on to other time loop movies, and how they twist this.

RUN, LOLA, RUN is another low-budget movie taking the opposite approach.

The movie uses the time loop to maximize tension and conflict. Lola and her boyfriend face death at the hands of the criminal underworld or the police. It’s a race and a puzzle: which choices solve it?

EDGE OF TOMORROW may seem like an action movie, and there’s plenty of action. The heart of it is character. The character played by Tom Cruise starts out as an arrogant jerk who’s useless in battle. You laugh every time he gets killed on the beach in silly ways. The more you dislike Cruise as an actor, the better the movie works.

In the end, Cruise suffers, trains, and sacrifices himself to beat the alien boss and win the war. Unlike 99 percent of thriller heroes, he has an actual character arc.

The movie works better because it doesn’t have the standard romantic relationship, but more of a mentor-protege with Emily Blunt’s veteran soldier.

GROUNDHOG DAY is similar in that it’s about Bill Murray moving from selfish jerk to decent human being, with that heart of the story wrapped with all the time-loop fun.

It would be hard to beat this movie for comedy and exploring all the things a person could do with infinite time.

BOSS LEVEL is a lot like RUN, LOLA, RUN in structure, with Frank Grillo trying to puzzle his way out of this.

There’s a ton of humor mixed in with the fights and explosions, and all the ways Grillo dies. It shares the same climactic device as EDGE OF TOMORROW by taking the hero out of the loop for the final run, meaning if he dies, he dies forever.

This is a highly under-rated movie that I’ve seen five bazillion times.

There are far more time-loop movies than you’d think.

Search on the YouTubes, google it, consult the hallucinating oracle known as chatgippity or the slightly less insane Claude, which is a terrible name for an AI machine. Maybe you could do worse. Karen would be bad, though Adolf and Lucifer tie for the worst.

If you have a favorite time loop movie, tell me about it!