Predestination

Michael and Peter Spierig’s 2014 film follows a temporal agent who travels back to stop attacks before they happen; one bomber has eluded him for years. At the centre is not a set piece but a bar counter: the long middle is one person telling a barman a life story. The twist is not saved for the last minute either, so the film has to keep going as the portrait of a person meeting themselves. The source is a story Robert A. Heinlein wrote in one day on 11 July 1958; Playboy turned it down and it ran in the March 1959 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The bomber hunt was added as a frame. Sarah Snook’s male self was built with prosthetics by Steven Boyle and Samantha Little, Weta veterans of King Kong who called it the hardest makeup they had done; the directors refused thick rubber so the face could act. Melbourne and its Docklands Studios stood in for New York. American cinemas took 68,372 dollars against roughly 4.8 million abroad, and Snook won the AACTA best actress award. A good fit if you accept time travel delivered as a life story told across a counter. Not for anyone waiting on a final minute reversal, because the answer opens early and the rest belongs to the character.