“It’s amazing! There’s a Time TV here!”

Justin’s rating: Time sucker-punched me!

Justin’s review: If you’re in the mood for a really short, really strange, and somewhat upbeat scifi tale, I’ll tell you from the past that you in the future should perhaps watch Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.

A Japanese cafe owner wakes up one day to find out that his computer monitor is showing him… himself. From downstairs in the cafe, two minutes in the future. For a completely unexplained reason, these two monitors become linked — a sort of time portal of a couple minutes where the future can talk (and see) the past and vice versa.

Yeah, this is one of those movies where your eyes are going to go a little bit crossed trying to follow it all. Fortunately, the cafe owner and his group of friends experiment with the monitors, sending themselves information up and down the timeline, and as they figure stuff out, they take pains to explain it.

One of their experiments is facing the monitors toward each other, creating a series of nested videos that go far beyond two minutes. Their future selves give them crucial (or silly) information, and as the movie continues, eventually we see that play out in the present, closing the loop.

It’s a very little bit like that scene from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the duo from the past meet the duo from the future in front of the Circle K. There, we got both sides of that conversation at different points in the movie. This is like that, only far more so.

Because of the growing complexity of the time shenanigans, the story and threads are kept relatively simple. There are fewer than 10 people in this entire movie and only about three locations.

But with a continually running camera — this is presented in one shot — there’s an awful lot of developments that happen. A few of the friends try for a get-rich-quick scheme that backfires. Another guy gets a beloved toy. And the cafe owner sees several minutes into the future his crush being kidnapped by two strangers.

Also, the time cops show up. That is to be expected.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes only can fiddle with this concept so much before it runs out of ideas, but it’s a quirky ride before it gets there. The friends are a likable bunch but not fleshed out at all, and both the time cops and bad guys inexplicably come out of nowhere as if they were scooting in from just off stage.

I’d heard really good things about this movie, but other than handling the time recursions with a flow chart in the writers’ room, there’s nothing particularly skillful at play here. It’s just OK, a passable way to spend an hour. Just ask yourself this once you get to the end, though: Would you tell your past self that you should definitely see this? I might… with a shrug.