14
votes
Movie recommendation: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Runtime: 70 minutes.
Budget: $27,000 USD.
Tomatometer: 98% - 8.3 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.3 / 10 - 2k ratings
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Streaming: Vudu (Free with Adds) & Amazon (free with Prime)
This is an engaging & novel sci fi, filmed in one location, a Japanese cafe, using what appears to be a single shot for all 70 minutes.
It has comedy, romance, violence, action, and an utterly novel sci fi concept. All in 70 minutes.
It's super cute!~ I loved this movie, great toy SFnal story
I watched this earlier today based on your recommendation. It was pretty fun. I especially enjoyed the ending, I thought it made the film's concept more meaningful.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Did you watch the end credits, where they showed how they made it with single continuous shots? That blew my mind tbh.
I hadn't until I saw your message. It's pretty impressive given the physical constraints they had but it also highlights why I don't like directors attempting single take (which this film isn't, but it appears as though it is). I think it harms films more than it helps and I feel as though directors do it to limit themselves into a corner for no good reason other than to show their technical chops off.
I don't mean to be overly critical of this film for being shot the way it was, because I can see why they decided to do it, but I think this style would've worked a lot better with a larger environment where the camera wouldn't force actors to face a certain way in some scenes.
It's very much like One Cut of the Dead in that regards.
I guess I should have put that in my review.
If you disliked One Cut of the Dead, don't bother.
I checked this movie out last week but didn’t mention it until now. My family and I really enjoyed it.
I thought it was a good example of how you could make a lower-budget, independent film quite impressive in other ways if you know where to put in the effort.
Thanks for posting it here!
Cool. Hope you watched the end credits.
Looked into this when I was viewing shorter features, it didn't catch me the first time but I'll give it another go.
Follow up, I did see it, it was pretty good. The middle bits got a little tedious, and if it was expanded to full feature length, it probably wouldn't have been as good, but I liked it for what it was.
Thanks for watching the tedious bits!
I'm sorry you didn't love it!
The middle bits were complex from a storyline perspective, but raised some interesting timeline questions (pre-destination vs paradoxes), and were impressive purely from a technical perspective. They used an incredibly small hand held camera plugged into a smart phone. They used a single continuous take(s). Everything we saw on the TV screens looked live but were pre-recorded and played as recordings (not digitally edited in afterwards.)
To appreciate how much effort went into this, watch the end credits, where they showed how they made it with single continuous shots. This was all shot from 6pm to 6am over the span of a week. Because that is when the cafe was closed.
Spoiler timeline questions
While the tedious parts were tedious, they drove home the point that the actors were predestined down a certain path. The cafe owner lied to himself in order to avoid a paradox. The bad guys only crossed the camera when no one was looking.... Until the twist at the end. The tedious part was a setup for the twist at the end. Was the tedium worth the twist? If you are after pure entertainment value, probably not. But it's frankly amazing for something practically shot on an iPhone. I am looking forward to the directors next film TBH.
That was really fun! Thanks for sharing.