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I thought what really made this movie was the cast. Helped the script pop with the choices of actors.

An interesting and informative write up. Likewise, my favorite dialogue is about how talking about time travel would take all day making diagrams with straws. That worked for me. It is easier to suspend disbelief and and go with the flow than it is to make sense of jumping back and forth in time -- in any movie that uses the time travel plot device. The remarks on theme is an inciting incident in my mind. It provokes me to compare "Looper" to "Edge of Tomorrow" on that point. Both have a plot device involving time travel, but what overarching theme about the human predicament is explored in "Edge of Tomorrow"? What moral purpose informs the denouement? (But I am beating on a horse that is dying at the box-office...)

Thanks for this opportunity, Scott. Really fun to write this up, and I'm really gonna have to go see "Edge of Tomorrow."

I concur about that scene between Joe and Old Joe in the diner where they dispatch the discussion of time travel in short order is a terrific moment. A lot hangs on it, but we don't want to get bogged down in the details. So the way the characters handle it is ideal. And Dan makes a great point: "That could be seen as cheating, but it works here because THESE CHARACTERS wouldn’t care about the intricacies of time travel. They’re not physicists waxing philosophical about time travel. They’re hardened criminals who care about what’s right in front of them and nothing else. That’s an elegant solution to prevent over exposition that’s also rooted in character." Once again, the solution lies in the CHARACTERS! I'm guessing Rian Johnson confronted this moment, knowing he didn't want to have to lay in all sorts of exposition, then realized, these dudes aren't scientists, they don't give a shit about the details, so wham-bam, short explanation with some biting humor and done. Rian Johnson is a terrific talent. If you haven't seen Brick, do it. Such a smart movie with a unique conceptual take: Film noir in a contemporary high school setting. And to me, Looper was perhaps the most important movie to come out in 2012 because it defied conventional wisdom about smart movies in that budget range bound to fail. It had a $30M production budget and grossed $177M worldwide. More smart, fun, entertaining movies like Looper, please!

Dan, it's an excellent write-up. I'd be curious to see your reaction to EOT. It's more mainstream than Looper, witness the ending, for one. But still a strong movie IMHO.