time travel to dinosaurs movie

'65' & 9 Other Movies to Travel Back to Prehistoric Times

Take a step back in time.

If you could time travel to any period in the past or in the future, what would you choose? Would you travel to a world before tools and fire and fend for your life against clawed beasts with the same brawn and breadth as a tank? If you said 'yes', then a vacation to prehistoric times is the destination for you!

RELATED: 7 Best Movies About Dinosaurs From the Friendliest to the Deadliest

And just because humans and dinosaurs were separated by a wee 65 million years doesn't mean you can't have your cake and eat it too. This is the movie business and evolutionary timelines are low on the priorities list. In a worst-case scenario, if you're forced to abide by the laws of nature, you'll just have to settle for a woolly mammoth. Shucks.

10 65 (2023)

Adam Driver plays an intergalactic dino-fighting pilot whose ship crash lands on our planet, but 65 million years ago. Thematically it's got a little The Last of Us meets Jurassic Park going on, with a bonus ticking time bomb of the infamous asteroid that changed life on Earth barreling toward the storyline. Yes, zombies are scary, but so are dinosaurs. With these mushy little human bodies? Yeah, no thanks.

Because 65 comes from the same minds that wrote A Quiet Place ( Scott Beck and Bryan Woods ), you can count on feeling the fright with multiple jump scares. These are balanced with the softer father-daughter moments, with Driver's quasi-adopted Earth daughter Ariana Greenblatt . The only passenger to survive the crash, she and Driver forge a bond through their shared loss of family and gain of dinosaur fighter skills.

9 Early Man (2018)

Stop-motion movies are often as mind-blowing as the meteor crash that erupts at the beginning of this movie. From the first impact, Early Man presents all the ingredients that audiences have come to expect and love from a Nick Park project. Like Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep , there's cheeky small-town charm coming from every corner of this claymation creation.

RELATED: Every Aardman Animation Film Ranked By Their 'Fresh' Score

From the character design to the story design, it's as endearing as the cast's toothy grins. Like Park's previous films, the stars were seemingly been plucked from the top of the 2018 British actors chart with Eddie Redmayne , Tom Hiddleston , and Maisie Williams . Together these cave characters revolutionize what soccer (football) means to mankind, one stop-motion kick at a time.

8 10,000 BC (2008)

Roland Emmerich 's 10,000 BC was made at the height of our 2000s sword and sandal days - when Gladiator , 300 , and Troy topped the box office with the same stronghold that superhero movies have today. In the 2000s, our heroes were just various forms of Thor and 10,000 BC is no exception. Despite a plot we've seen 10,000 times before, the 9% Rotten Tomatoes review is perhaps a bit harsh.

RELATED: From 'Independence Day' to 'Moonfall': Every Roland Emmerich Movie Ranked

It's a big adventure that pulls out all of the stops when it comes to big-budget effects. Even watching the movie today, in spite of the breakneck updates in technology, 10,000 BC still looks pretty great. The flack the movie received didn't seem to come so much from the look but from the glaring historical inaccuracies. The filmmakers took liberties like; shuffling the building of pyramids 8,000 years sooner, and using mammoths (who would not have been able to survive in a desert climate) to build said pyramids. But, history-shmistery!

7 Ice Age (2002)

Ice Age is a frosty family animation that warms the heart. Though the animation style itself doesn't quite hold up to our Pixar standards of today, the story and the voice acting definitely do. A perfectly cast Ray Romano voices our hero mammoth, and together his relationship with Denis Leary the sabertooth tiger, and John Leguizamo the sloth, give us the perfect Wizard of Oz trio for this prehistoric yellow brick road adventure.

RELATED: Every ‘Ice Age’ Movie, Ranked From Chilly To Ice-Cap Melting

Other cleverly cast voice include; Jack Black , Cedric the Entertainer , and co-direct Chris Wedge himself as everyone's favorite " hapless saber-tooth squirrel " Scrat. It's thanks to characters like these, that this "comedy of peril" still shines like a new fossil 20+ years later.

6 'Caveman' (1981)

Caveman tells the hero's journey of Ringo Starr, the runt of the litter, shunned by the bigger men, and overlooked by the supermodel cavewomen. When his tribe is chased up a tree by the quintessential prehistoric creature, the stop-motion giant lizard, he is the first to be trampled over. By the end of the meandering odyssey, however, Ringo discovers marijuana, fire, and rock n' roll, and even rescues his friend Dennis Quaid a couple of times.

The skill sets don't end there though. To add to his growing list of accomplishments, Ringo also modernizes weapons and tames the first animal. Who knew one guy could do so much? If anyone could, it's one of The Beatles .

5 'Quest for Fire' (1981)

Quest for Fire potentially wins the category of 'movie that takes cavepeople the most seriously'. Ron Perlman and the rest of the early man gang are fully committed to seeing their roles portrayed to maximum authenticity. As The Quest for Fire Adventure (the making of) host Orson Welles declares, the film is based on "rock-solid research" of the world 800 centuries ago.

They went so far as to create a new language for the film, with assistance from none other than A Clockwork Orange writer Anthony Burgess . Equal emphasis was put into all other aspects of the film from the hair and makeup (earning an Academy Award) and the settings, shot entirely on location in Scotland and Canada.

4 'The Land That Time Forgot' (1974)

This movie doesn't have the best dinosaur time per run time ratio, but it does offer a different genre appeal than many of its peers. For the first half hour, The Land That Time Forgot is a pretty standard WWI movie until the submarine reaches the "uncharted and forgotten for 200 years" island of Caprona. Post-Carpona arrival, prepare to be dazzled. For 70s B-movie special effects and exteriors shot in Reading, the tropical interior looks pretty terrific.

In an interview with The Guardian , director Kevin Conner offered insight on their technique; "The production designer, Maurice Carter, suggested doing all the dinosaurs as hand puppets. They were about 2ft tall and the guy who made them, Roger Dicken, had his arm up inside them, while their arms were on tiny sticks, a bit like the Muppets." It's all part of the charm.

3 'One Million Years B.C.' (1966)

Even if you haven't watched One Million Years B.C. , there's a 98% chance that you've seen the iconic poster of a bronzed and windswept Raquel Welch towering in front of an active dinosaur war. The movie trailer promises "imaginative realism like never before" over images of bikini-clad cavewomen and a triple-decker bus-size turtle. It's all the imaginative realism you could ask for from 1966.

Aside from Raquel Welch, the film's draw comes from the brilliant special effects prowess of Ray Harryhausen of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans (1981). The scene where his pterodactyl creations kidnap and fight over Welch is maybe not terrifying to a modern audience, but a really fun watch.

2 'A Journey to the Beginning of Time' (1955)

The movie opens the way that The Ou tsiders (among others) does, a boy looks through his journal at the journey he and his friends made during the summer. Though, unlike most summer journeys that take their characters only forward in time, these friends go on A Journey to the Beginning of Time .

With a row boat as their time machine, the boys paddle from Germany to the prehistoric ages, gazing upon a prehistoric animal kingdom like a natural history museum exhibit come to life. Due to the lack of dinosaurs in Northern Bohemia in the 1950s, filmmakers had to employ a layering of special effects with matte paintings, live actors, projections, and miniature models that came together like a work of art.

1 'Three Ages' (1923)

For his feature-length directorial debut, Buster Keaton rides in on a puppet dinosaur wearing his trademark blank slate expression, perfectly befitting of the Stone Age. It's the Keaton we know and love. Oh, the charm! Oh, the charisma!

Three Ages has a short run time of just over 60 minutes, and because the plot is also shared with the 'Roman Age' and 'Modern Age', we only have a few minutes with caveman Keaton. But it's a precious pleasant few that, one could say, sets the groundwork for all future prehistoric comedies from The Flintstones to Year One . The film is all the proof you need that Keaton stands the test of time in any age as one of the most brilliant and beloved figures in comedy.

NEXT: The 15 Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made, Ranked

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A Sound of Thunder

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65’s twist makes the dino-fighting movie just a little more interesting

Adam Driver explains his character, and why he was thinking more about Alien than Jurassic Park

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Adam Driver’s Mills holds up a 3D hologram of his ship while he navigates the prehistoric jungles of Earth in 65

Is a twist a twist if it twists right in the first five minutes of a movie? According to Sony Pictures, yes — which is why marketing for 65 has emphasized the part where Adam Driver fights dinosaurs on a prehistoric planet Earth rather than answering the question of how he got there in the first place. But the truth left me absolutely giddy.

“After a cataclysmic crash on an unknown planet,” reads Sony’s carefully worded plot description for 65 , “pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth… 65 million years ago.”

But here is the thing: Mills does not discover that he’s actually stranded on Earth 65 million years ago!

[ Ed. note: The following interview contains spoilers for 65 .]

That’s because Mills has never been to Earth, or even heard of the planet. There is no time travel in 65 ; the pilot’s crash was simply a work accident during a routine shipping mission across the galaxy, coordinated by beings from another planet. Driver isn’t “human” — he’s an alien!

Finding an organic way back to the time of the dinosaurs was a naturally tricky endeavor, according to writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, and even more so when they landed on the idea that Mills would arrive on Earth from an entirely different civilization.

“We needed it to feel grounded,” Beck says of the challenge. “There were wild ideas that were left on the page, like Adam speaking another language, or different facial modifications [to make him look more alien]. But we needed to find a blend where we didn’t lose the audience in the first five minutes. We were always pressure-testing.”

The duo spent a good portion of preproduction on 65 weighing world-building options with production designer Kevin Ishioka. The questions ranged from basic — Has this civilization embraced digital technology, or do they rely on analog? — to the fantastical. At one point, Beck and Woods considered a design of Mills’ galactic freighter that would have been made entirely out of rock, unlike anything the average moviegoer might immediately detect as a spaceship.

“We talked a lot about how the technology in the film should both be at times futuristic — meaning more advanced than our technology — and at other times regressed,” Woods says. “We wanted to run that line between futuristic and retro, a hybrid of ancient and future. That was the benchmark for us.”

Mills (Driver) holds his hand up to Koa (Arianna Greenblatt) telling her to wait to go out a door while he clutches his gun. Koa holds up a finger to say “shh” in 65.

The opening scenes of the film, set on an alien beach speckled with spiraling vertical rock formations, only give us traces of a larger world established in the far reaches of space. The focus is more on Mills’ soul-searching: The only reason he took his shipping job was to earn enough money for a medication that might or might not save his terminally ill daughter. When it all goes wrong (thanks to an ill-timed chunk of space rock that sends his ship spiraling down to Earth, a precursor of a much bigger meteor headed toward the planet), Mills’ fight for survival is immediately pressurized by a need to get home to his child, and to protect another survivor, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who has also been stranded in the Cretaceous Era.

“We try to show more than explain,” Driver tells Polygon, “but you know what the relationship means to him in his unwillingness to talk, when he’s faced with someone who, in every detail, reminds him of his past.”

Mills isn’t a conventional hero. While Jurassic Park comes up as an obvious sci-fi touchstone for the film, Driver compares Mills to Harry Dean Stanton in Alien . He’s just a blue-collar guy punching a time clock. “It could almost be considered the equivalent to a truck driver. It’s not a planet where being a pilot is foreign to them. There isn’t some kind of hierarchical thing [because he’s an alien]. This is what he does.”

While 65 does get pulpy, Beck and Woods also cite Alien as a way of rooting the potentially far-fetched setup in something real. While they created a new planet and sculpted a world where aliens like Mills ship cryogenically frozen people as cargo, they ultimately take him to a familiar planet, where he faces creatures the audience knows a great deal about already. That meant respecting the known science about dinosaurs while also diving into science fiction.

“We had a Venn diagram, where one circle was all about science,” Woods says, “And then in the other Venn diagram circle, we had Ridley Scott’s Alien , one of the scariest movies ever made. And so we just wanted to kind of combine interesting science and also something that’s frightening.”

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A dinosaur expert picks the top 10 dinosaur movies of all time

Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist and author of the book 'The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs,' gave us his definitive ranking.

David Canfield is a Staff Editor. He oversees the magazine's books section, and writes film features and awards analysis.

"[June 2018] marks a special date for me and millions of other dinosaur enthusiasts around the world: the 25th anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park . I was 9 years old when my dad took my brothers and me to see it in the cinema for the first time. It was magisterial. Dinosaurs danced across the big screen in a way I had never seen them before. It was like we were watching them, alive, right in front of us." —Steve Brusatte

Jurassic Park

"The original Jurassic Park is—and probably will always be—my absolute favorite. The dinosaurs seem like real living, moving, breathing animals instead of mere movie monsters—although the T. rex and the velociraptors are some of the greatest villains in cinematic history. This was one of the first films to use new CGI technology , and it presented an image of dinosaurs people hadn't seen before: dynamic, intelligent, successful animals—not the dim-witted, slow-moving mistakes of a bygone era, as portrayed in so many of the books I read as a child." —SB

Jurassic World

"Okay, so the fourth Jurassic Park film is a tad nostalgic , [but] there is little attempt to make the dinosaurs even remotely realistic. Instead, we get hybrid species and genetically modified monstrosities far larger than anything nature ever produced. But, it is addictively entertaining. Although the paleontologist in me cringes when I see inaccurate dinosaurs on screen, I appreciate this film for what it is: a roaring spectacle!" —SB

Walking With Dinosaurs

"I can vouch for the accuracy of the dinosaurs in this film: I was one of the scientists who worked with the producers, tasked with making sure the dinosaurs were the right size and shape, and moved and behaved in ways true to the evidence we have from fossils. For me, this is the most realistic view of dinosaurs that has ever graced any screen. It shows dinosaurs going about their everyday business, like you're watching a nature documentary." —SB

The Land Before Time

"This cartoon adventure is probably the most emotional film on dinosaurs that I've seen. The tears flow as the orphan Littlefoot goes on a journey, meeting several other young dinosaurs as they search for the idyllic Great Valley. Sure, the dinosaurs are humanized to the point where they are barely dinosaurs anymore, and they talk. But this is great storytelling, and it is a treasured childhood classic for many paleontologists of my 1980s–90s generation (and many of my non-paleontologist friends)." —SB

" King Kong was also one of the first films to depict dinosaurs. Although the special effects seem primitive now, if you were a moviegoer in 1933 you probably would have found this film intoxicating. The dinosaurs—including Tyrannosaurus rex, stegosaurus, and brontosaurus, all animated in stop-motion style—give Kong's home of Skull Island a creepy, primeval feel." —SB

"One of the scenes of this animated classic , set to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring , tells the story of Earth history. Of course it's dinosaurs that steal the scene. When I first saw Fantasia I considered it dull, but now I appreciate it as a glorious cinematic telling of the story I've spent my career studying: the rise and fall of the dinosaurs." —SB

"Long after Fantasia , Disney returned to the dinosaur genre with this turn-of-the-millennium, big-budget CGI blockbuster . A meteor destroys an island paradise and the surviving dinosaurs (and, for some odd reason, lemurs) set out to find the Nesting Grounds, where they will be safe. The dinosaurs come across as human versions of big reptiles, and their talking prevents any illusion of realism. The animation quality, however, is superb, and the grand, sweeping landscapes are a visual treat." —SB

The Good Dinosaur

"Pixar entered the dinosaur game with The Good Dinosaur , a sci-fi tale of what might have happened if that huge asteroid never hit and dinosaurs didn't die out. The plot centers on a long-necked apatosaurus and his human friend, who go on a mystical journey together . The stunning imagery and imaginative storytelling are classic Pixar." —SB

One Million Years B.C.

"And now for some absurdity. There is nothing remotely scientifically accurate about this film, but you can't turn away. Dinosaurs and cavemen living together. Brontosauruses and giant spiders in fight scenes. Raquel Welch as an aboriginal fisher-woman, who is captured by a giant pterodactyl and survives a drop into the ocean. This is rambunctious entertainment, and the stop-motion dinosaurs (designed by the famed animator Ray Harryhausen ) are actually really good." —SB

Jurassic Park III

"And one final film, which I didn't enjoy so much: Jurassic Park III . It almost killed the franchise. I would like to find some good in this film, but the storyline is derivative, the key fight scene between T. rex and spinosaurus is a dud, and the creativity that defined Jurassic Park is nowhere to be found. Thankfully, Jurassic World has given new life to these most amazing of movie dinosaurs." —SB

The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs

Brusatte's book, The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs , fascinatingly tells the complete history of the dinosaurs on Earth. Buy a copy here .

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

The 25 Greatest Time-Travel Movies Ever Made

It must say something, surely, about humans, how often time-travel movies are about returning to the past rather than jumping to the future. As Mark Duplass’s forlorn character says in Safety Not Guaranteed , “The mission has to do with regret.” With all the potential to explore the unknown world of the future, so often when our minds conspire to bend the rules of time it’s instead to rehash the old. It’s compelling to watch a character in a movie do what we cannot — right past wrongs or uncover the reason for or meaning behind the events in their lives, whether they be emotionally catastrophic or merely geopolitically motivated.

So absent is the future from the canon, in fact, that when it is involved, typically future dwellers are leaving their own time to come back to the present. Back to the Future Part II aside, it seems as if there’s something about going forward in time that just doesn’t track for humans. (Of course, you could argue that this is because the present-day concept of bidirectional time travel would infinitely multiply or change beyond recognition any future that may occur, but that’s a knot for another article.)

In any case, the time-travel stories deemed worthy of Hollywood budgets aren’t always straightforward in their mechanics. Some films on this list barely qualify as time-travel movies at all; others could hardly qualify as anything else. There are movies about trips through time but also ones about the bending and fracturing and muddying thereof; then there are those about, as Andy Samberg aptly puts it in Palm Springs , “one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about.” There’s even a movie in which we get only 13 seconds’ worth of time travel, when it functions more like a joke whose punch line hits at the film’s climax.

What these films all do have in common is a fascination with changing the way time works. That being said, the list leaves out movies in larger, more extended franchises in which time meddling is a one-off dalliance thrown into a sequel with little by way of foreshadowing: think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Avengers: Endgame , and Men in Black III . (It also leaves off perhaps the Ur-time-travel movie, Primer , and the quite good Midnight in Paris because their directors don’t deserve the column inches.) We’re looking at self-contained stories using time mechanics from the start, with preference given to those that involve themselves more intently with the ins and outs of time travel; that ask questions about time, aging, memory and so forth; and that try to succeed at it in new and interesting ways. So let’s get to it.

25. Galaxy Quest (1999)

Does Galaxy Quest really count as a time-travel movie? Some compelling reasons argue that it doesn’t: Time travel isn’t a major factor in the plot, and the time traveling that does occur is, yes, only a 13-second jump. But its use of time travel is meaningful insofar as the movie itself is a loving spoof of Star Trek , which makes use of time travel in three films ( one of which made this list ), not to mention dozens of episodes across its various TV iterations. Tacking on time travel as a deus ex machina for the actors in a Star Trek– like show pressed into service as an actual space crew by an endangered alien race is the exact right amount of ribbing in a movie that’s as on point as it is hilarious.

Galaxy Quest is available to rent on Amazon .

24. Happy Death Day (2017)

Pick away at the surface of a time-loop movie and you find a horror movie. Most of the entries on this list are covered in enough feel-good spin to land as comedies, but Happy Death Day stares the horror of the time-loop phenomenon right in the face. (It’s also quite funny.) Reliving the same day over and over is an unimaginably potent form of psychological torture, and adding murder to the equation does little to dull that edge. The film follows a college-age protagonist struggling to escape from a masked slasher hell-bent on killing her again and again while she tries to solve the mystery of how she got stuck in a time loop.

Happy Death Day is available to rent on Amazon .

23. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Seriously, this may be the only good movie in which the film’s whole focus is using a time machine to travel into the future. The fact that it’s a sequel is telling — the characters already traveled into the past in the first movie , and the filmmakers decided to save “traveling even further into the past“ for the third film in the trilogy. Still, Back to the Future Part II is a fun time that makes great use of sight gags and references, recasting scenes from the first film in the distant future year of 2015 with all its hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes.

Back to the Future Part II is available to rent on Amazon .

22. See You Yesterday (2019)

It’s a dirty little secret of time-travel movies that they tend to be, well, pretty white. Tenet ’s Protagonist aside, if Hollywood’s sending someone through time, they’re almost certainly not a Black person, and for obvious reasons: Most of post-contact North American history is deeply unfriendly to people of color, and the problems a person running around out of time and place is going to encounter are deeply compounded if they’ll likely be the target of racist abuse or violence — which makes See You Yesterday all the more compelling. Produced by Spike Lee and featuring one of filmdom’s most famous time travelers in a cameo role, it follows a Black teenage science prodigy who uses a time machine to try to save her brother from being killed by a police officer.

See You Yesterday is streaming on Netflix .

21. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

No offense to the Back to the Future franchise, but time travel never looks more fun on film than it does in the first Bill & Ted movie. It’s a concept that feels distinctly of a different era, so pure is its zaniness, that it’s hard to imagine anyone concocting it today. The titular duo, Californian high-school students in the ’80s, travel through the past looking for historical figures in order to ace a history project, then bring them all back to the present. High jinks ensue! We get Genghis Khan in a sporting-goods store and Mozart on an electric keyboard. What more could you want?

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is streaming on HBO Max .

20. Source Code (2011)

Time-travel-film aficionados know this won’t be Jake Gyllenhaal’s only stop on this list, but no matter. Source Code finds him repeating the same eight minutes over and over as he struggles to find the culprit in a train bombing — with each replay ending in his own death by explosion. For some reason, a romantic subplot is shoehorned into this, along with a bunch of frankly unnecessary technical mumbo-jumbo, but the core idea is a compelling mix of the time-loop movie and the train whodunit that Gyllenhaal is a perfect fit for.

Source Code is available to rent on Amazon .

19. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Some sort of law of nature dictates that every genuinely good idea and/or piece of true art has to at some point be turned into a Hollywood movie. Thank God La Jetée was adapted into something that can stand on its own feet artistically. 12 Monkeys may not retain its source material’s black-and-white look or stripped-down, static-image presentation, but it is a rollicking good time nonetheless. That’s in no small part due to director Terry Gilliam getting the best out of Bruce Willis and a young Brad Pitt, and recasting World War III as a planet-decimating virus. Which, like at least one other movie on this list , “speaks to the present moment,” or whatever.

12 Monkeys is available to rent on Amazon .

18. Run Lola Run (1998)

Unlike almost all of the other films on this list, the terms time travel and time machine don’t show up anywhere in Run Lola Run . Rather, it’s a sort of de facto time-loop scenario in which the protagonist tries repeatedly to pay a ransom to save her boyfriend’s life. In fact, if not for a few key details, it could easily be characterized (and often has been) as an alternate-endings movie rather than a time-travel film. But the fact that Lola seems to be learning from her past attempts with each successive one suggests that she is, indeed, using knowledge gained from previous loops to bring a satisfactory end to this situation.

Run Lola Run is available to rent on Amazon .

17. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

One of the most striking things about Groundhog Day is the mutability and replicability of its core conceit. Perhaps the best case in point is Edge of Tomorrow , sometimes known as Live. Die. Repeat. after its original tagline. It’s the kind of physically grueling movie only an actor as genuinely unhinged as Tom Cruise could pull off. A noncombatant thrust into a war against invading aliens, Cruise’s character finds himself reliving day one of combat over and over, slowly but surely refining his techniques in order to survive the extraterrestrial onslaught. Like the central twosome in the much less violent Palm Springs , he winds up with a partner in (war) crime, teaming up with the similarly time-trapped Emily Blunt, and the explanation for the replay glitch here is actually pretty satisfying.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on Fubo TV .

16. Star Trek (2009)

If you could create some sort of an advanced stat to measure controversy generated per unit of interesting filmmaking decisions, J.J. Abrams would have to be near the top in terms of his ability to rig up movie drama from almost nothing. This is a guy whose filmography is like Godzilla rip-off, Spielberg homage, safe reboot of cherished IP, repeat. Star Trek may be his best film, though, a sure-footed reinvention of a dorky sci-fi franchise that made it, well, cool. Somehow, the beauty of Spock and Kirk’s bromance being woven through chance encounters with future selves kind of … works?

Star Trek is available to rent on Amazon .

15. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

There’s a relative dearth of time travel in animated film, which perhaps is a function simply of the fact that it’s less impressive to stage in a world that’s already unreal. If you can Looney Tunes your way through physics, what’s so special about grabbing the flow of time and tying it into a bow? Still, the original Girl Who Leapt Through Time deserves mention here. It’s a beautiful story that interlaces the complexity of time leaping with the intensity of teenage emotion and the thorny process of growing up where the opportunity to redo things leads, over time, to growth — a less shitty Groundhog Day , in a way.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is available to rent on Amazon .

14. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

She may not be the most famous, decorated, or emulated actress of her generation, but Aubrey Plaza is someone whose personality spoke to the irony-soaked 2010s in a way that simply could not be denied. Her character on Parks and Recreation , April Ludgate, was, by all accounts, created specifically to channel Plaza’s real-life personality to the screen, and she plays essentially the same character in Safety Not Guaranteed . Here, she’s a sarcastic intern at a magazine working on a story about a would-be time traveler and using her feminine wiles to slowly gain his trust. The chemistry between Plaza and Mark Duplass is probably the film’s high point; the subplot about the FBI feels like it was clipped out of a bad X-Files episode.

Safety Not Guaranteed is streaming on Tubi .

13. La Jetée (1962)

At only a 28-minute run time, La Jetée is arguably too short to merit inclusion on this list. However, what it lacks in content (and in, well, moving images; it’s almost exclusively a collection of static black-and-white shots set to voice-over), it more than makes up for in inventiveness and influence, and it would be a travesty to leave it out in favor of more recent by-the-book fare. Tracing the tale of a man held prisoner in post-WWIII Paris being used in time-travel experiments as his captors seek to remedy the postapocalyptic state of the world, he’s sent into both the future and the past and ends up unraveling a lifelong personal mystery while he’s at it.

La Jetée is streaming on the Criterion Channel .

12. Planet of the Apes (1968)

Unlike the worse but more straightforwardly time-traveling Tim Burton remake, the relationship between the original Planet of the Apes and time travel is inexact — technically, the astronaut crew that lands on the titular planet does travel forward 2,000 years, but it’s not done via a time machine. The travel isn’t instantaneous: It literally does take them 2,000 years to get there; they’re just unconscious and on life support. Still, the way the film’s ending handles the iconic reveal is exactly in line with the best of the time-travel canon, the telescoping, mise en abyme feeling of the world shifting in front of your very eyes without your moving an inch.

Planet of the Apes is available to rent on Amazon .

11. Groundhog Day (1993)

The famous Bill Murray vehicle essentially invented the infinite-time-loop genre (and it’s hardly a movie that succeeds on the strength of its concept alone), but the idea at its core is so steeped in the casual misogyny of late-’80s and early-’90s cinema that it’s hard to watch today without cringing. Murray’s character employing what amounts to PUA-style techniques over and over and over in a desperate bid to fuck his hapless co-worker just doesn’t hit the way it did back then. If the story arc didn’t present a guy detoxifying himself of the worst aspects of masculinity in order to be worthy of a woman’s love as the primary way for a 20th-century white man to achieve full personhood, this would be much higher on the list.

Groundhog Day is streaming on Starz .

10. Predestination (2014)

This is probably the most complicated film on the list. Following a “temporal agent” (played by Ethan Hawke) who’s trying to prevent a bombing in 1970s New York, it’s based on a Robert A. Heinlein short story and features Shiv Roy herself, Sarah Snook, in a star-making turn as someone with a complicated backstory and a secret. Like the best sci-fi, the film’s premise raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the titular concept and throws in some interesting musings on sex, gender, and the self in the process.

Predestination is streaming on Tubi .

9. Looper (2012)

Wes Anderson gets a lot of flak for his overwrought twee visuals, but Rian Johnson has a knack for making movies that feel and function like dioramas even if they don’t look it. Narratively speaking, everything here is constructed just so — and there’s a certain beauty in that — but who ever had a profound experience of art by looking at a diorama? Looper was probably Johnson’s least precious pre– Star Wars film, which is nice because the temptation to drastically overmaneuver the mechanics of a time-travel story can lead to disaster. The tech used to Bruce Willis–ify Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face is distracting, and the third act’s retreat from the postapocalyptic city of the future to the postapocalyptic corn farm of the future is a brave choice that the film struggles to land. Still, Johnson’s vision of a future in which organized crime runs time travel is compelling and well worth a watch.

Looper is streaming on Netflix .

8. Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a bit of a genre mash-up. Part high-school movie, part sci-fi flick, part bleak meditation on the soullessness of late-’80s America, it’s nevertheless a weirdly successful piece of filmmaking that makes fantastic use of a young Jake Gyllenhaal, a great supporting cast (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone, and Patrick Swayze among others), and an absolutely iconic haunting cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” Watching high schoolers navigate parallel universes, wormholes, and time travel is a dicey proposition, but director Richard Kelly makes it work, somehow.

Donnie Darko is streaming on HBO Max .

7. Back to the Future (1984)

While it’s clearly superior to the sequel (and leagues ahead of the final film in the trilogy), the original Back to the Future is a bit of a mess (John Mulaney was right , to be honest). Its racial and gender politics are cringey, and the incest subplot is weird (“It’s your cousin Marvin. Marvin Pornhub . You know that new plot element you’ve been looking for?”), but there’s a clear interest in time travel beyond its shimmering surface: the very real addressing of the “grandfather problem” in time travel via the slow disappearance of Marty from his family photo, the accidental invention of rock music, and a genuine curiosity about the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of time machines. Ahh, what the hell. It’s a romp.

Back to the Future is available to rent on Amazon .

6. Palm Springs (2020)

No offense to Gen-Xers and boomers, but the best time-loop movie of all time is Palm Springs . The film isn’t without its missteps, but it’s much more curious about life than Groundhog Day was through the eyes of Murray’s misanthrope. Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg‘s characters, stuck in the loop together, are a perfect comedic match, and their shared humanity makes for a beautiful arc. The film raises questions about what’s worth doing in life when nothing lasts and how to stay sane when every day is the same. Of course, as a sort of polar opposite of Tenet , it benefited from coming out during the pandemic by speaking, as it does, to the experience of lockdown.

Palm Springs is streaming on Hulu .

5. Tenet (2020)

Interstellar wasn’t enough for Chris Nolan, apparently. Tenet ’s legacy may end up being little more than that of the COVID action movie no one saw — a bloated thriller that Nolan fought to get into theaters and bar from home viewing reportedly to swell the size of his own pockets. It really did suffer from bad timing, though, because this is genuinely a quintessential big-screen popcorn movie whose absurdity is all the more palatable when it’s given the audiovisual bombast it deserves. Ambitious in scope as it traces a war on the past by the future (yes, you read that right), Tenet is as enamored of action tropes as it is in bucking them, and its investment in rendering visible the brain-bendingly knotty mechanics of moving through time is laudable, even when the movie itself remains opaque — as impenetrable as the future, as hazy as the past.

Tenet is streaming on HBO Max .

4. The Terminator (1984)

A partner to Blade Runner in the mid-’80s invention of sci-fi noir, The Terminator is a stunning film in many ways, despite the third act’s now-iffy visual effects. While it’s not James Cameron’s debut, and it would go on to be bested by its sequel , it functions as an incredible showcase for an emerging young director who would exclusively make big stories for the rest of his career. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as the relentless, unemotional killer cyborg sent back from the future to terminate the mother of the eventual resistance leader, and the film’s romantic subplot has just the perfect amount of time-travel-induced cheesiness for it to work.

The Terminator is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

3. Interstellar (2014)

It’s not inaccurate to say Christopher Nolan is a director who’s more interested in scale and scope than in expressing the minutiae of the human experience in its purest form. But in Interstellar, a Nolan movie in its titular ambitions, there’s a core element of time travel wrought not as sci-fi fireworks but as a paean to the sheer force and will of the power of love. It both does and doesn’t work, depending on your capacity for cheese in space, but even besides that, Nolan’s use of time as story arc — the way Miller’s planet functions, in particular — is conceptually masterful in the best kind of time-travel-movie way.

Interstellar is streaming on Paramount+ .

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Whereas the franchise’s first movie spends more time on the question of time travel, in the second it takes a bit of a back seat to the action itself. It’s hard to fault director James Cameron for this decision; T2 remains one of the best action movies of the ’90s and — along with Jurassic Park and The Matrix — one of the decade’s best when for special effects. The groundbreaking T-1000 would honestly be enough to get this movie on the list; a tween John Connor grappling with questions of predestination and the fact that he is vicariously responsible for his own conception feel almost like icing on the time-travel cake. Much as in 12 Monkeys , time travel here is mistaken for delusion, as valiant Sarah Connor, in a Cassandra-esque nightmare, has to battle against the future only she knows is coming. Of course, Cassandra never had access to any firepower stored in underground desert arsenals.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Netflix .

1. Arrival (2016)

It’s fair to wonder whether Arrival really is, in fact, a time-travel movie. The Ted Chiang short story it’s based on isn’t about time travel per se; rather, it’s an exploration of alternate forms of temporal understanding. The linguist protagonist, played by Amy Adams, doesn’t travel through time so much as come to experience it differently. Still, the plot ends up hinging on foreknowledge that she is granted not via visions but by actually experiencing her future simultaneously with her present and past. For our purposes, though, that’s time fuckery enough to merit inclusion, and boy howdy does the film deliver in overall quality. Partly, that’s simply a question of the source material. Chiang is arguably the most talented (and possibly the most decorated) American sci-fi writer of his generation. But the source story is not especially Hollywood friendly, and director Denis Villeneuve has adopted it lovingly, borrowing a plot device from another of Chiang’s stories, the more straightforwardly time-travel-based “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” in order to add some third-act blockbuster flavor. The result is a beautiful meditation on love, choice, and courage that packs art-film ethos into a genuine sci-fi blockbuster.

Arrival is streaming on Hulu and Paramount+ .

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Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern and Sam Neill in Jurassic Park

The top 20 dinosaur movies – rrraaaanked!

With Jurassic World Dominion out next month, we run through the best prehistoric pictures. You know what’s No 1 – or do you?

20 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

A film so stunningly stupid that it may as well not exist, the sequel to Jurassic World made the mistake of trying to move the story along. No longer just a romp about a theme park filled with dinosaurs, this is ostensibly a horror movie about a black market dinosaur auction in a spooky castle. Much worse than I have made it sound.

19 Theodore Rex (1995)

If you had to imagine the last film you would want to see, a mid-90s buddy cop movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and a fully dressed, anthropomorphic, animatronic dinosaur might be what you would envisage. Well, it already exists and it is called Theodore Rex. A film so bad that Goldberg had to be sued to appear in it.

18 Land of the Lost (2009)

In 2009, it seemed as if Will Ferrell could do no wrong. But that all changed when he released Land of the Lost, a $100m spectacular that attempted to fuse Ferrell’s loosey-goosey humour to a technologically precise effects behemoth about dinosaurs. The two did not mesh at all and Land of the Lost remains one of Ferrell’s strangest missteps.

17 Super Mario Bros (1993)

Fun fact: Super Mario Bros was released two weeks before Jurassic Park , but those two weeks now feel like 25 years. Everything about this film is dismal, not least the fact that its central conceit – the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs created a parallel dimension of humanoid dinosaurs led by Dennis Hopper – has very little to do with Mario.

16 The Flintstones (1994)

The same dino fad that inspired Theodore Rex also gave us The Flintstones, a 1994 live-action remake of the beloved cartoon series. While not a good film by any stretch – John Goodman looks embarrassed to be playing Fred Flintstone, for instance – it still has its moments. If nothing else, its depiction of Dino is relentlessly cute.

15 Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

I promise this is a real film. Denise Richards plays Tammy, a college girl whose life is turned upside down when her boyfriend’s brain is implanted into a giant animatronic dinosaur. Legend states that the film was made only because the director found a model dinosaur that nobody was using. It shows.

14 The Land That Time Forgot (1974)

There is a 2009 movie of this name produced by the creators of Sharknado. Please avoid that and head for the good stuff: Kevin Connor’s 1974 version. True, the dinosaurs lack the finesse of a Ray Harryhausen production – some are puppets, and some are men dressed up – but the story is mostly faithful to the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Plus, it features one of the all-time great cinematic jump scares.

13 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Were it not for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , this would be the worst Jurassic movie. Another attempt to deviate from a perfect story, The Lost World fails on many fronts. Half the original cast is missing (replaced by Vince Vaughn and others), all the characters know exactly what to expect from the island, and the finale (in which a T rex goes nuts in San Diego) sails far too close to pastiche.

12 The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Three years after One Million Years BC, Harryhausen had another, less successful, stab at dinosaur creation with The Valley of Gwangi. Essentially, some cowboys find a load of dinosaurs and have a big fight with them. The whole thing is ridiculous and isn’t remembered with much fondness. But if HBO can reimagine Westworld as an expensive prestige drama series, then The Valley of Gwangi deserves the same.

11 The Lost World (1925)

Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel has been adapted countless times, but the most effective version is Harry O Hoyt’s silent offering from 1925. It is is an exceptional production, utilising stop motion, full-body makeup and real animals. Points added for the climax, in which a loose brontosaurus smashes up a beloved Soho drinking establishment. Points lost for other elements ageing very, very badly indeed. You will know them when you see them.

10 Jurassic Park III (2001)

What a weird film. For the bulk of its running time, Jurassic Park III is intent on correcting the wrongs of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The story is more compact, the scares are scarier; everything is going swimmingly. Then it comes to an abrupt end, as if the production ran out of money. A wasted opportunity.

9 A Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)

It is incredible to think that Karel Zeman’s 1955 movie is almost 70 years old. While the story has decayed a little over time – kids row a boat down a river and gawp at the animals on the banks – the experience of watching it remains undimmed. In terms of animation, set design and ambition, this film is a miracle. Wes Anderson is a fan for a reason.

8 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

Having backed itself into a corner with the environmental sermon Ice Age: The Meltdown, the franchise decided to fudge history and introduce some dinosaurs into proceedings. For many, this is where the series began to lose its way, but there are plenty of delights to be had in the deliberately unfaithful dinosaur depictions.

7 The Land Before Time (1988)

Although the series eventually meandered into direct-to-video infinity, for a while The Land Before Time was the dinosaur movie. Directed by Don Bluth and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, it was envisioned as “Bambi with dinosaurs” and it absolutely nails the assignment. In parts syrupy, scary and profound, it is worth a rewatch.

6 Jurassic World (2015)

A huge financial success, Jurassic World isn’t so much a sequel as a remake. You could argue that its mimicry becomes rote and that Chris Pratt is no Jeff Goldblum, but there is something thrilling about a story being told well all over again. And, hey, if you are going to rip off anything, it might as well be Jurassic Park.

5 The Tree of Life (2011)

OK, you have to ignore most of the film to consider this a dinosaur movie. But that is fine, because you will just be ignoring lots of middle-aged men having bland quasi-existential crises. The moment in question comes when Terrence Malick gets bored by his film and decides to show us the history of the universe instead. There is a dinosaur sequence that cannot be forgotten.

4 The Good Dinosaur (2015)

This was overlooked on release, thanks to the cultural crater left by Inside Out , but Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur is an oasis of quiet charm. The story of a young apatosaurus who finds himself in charge of a small, mute human, The Good Dinosaur isn’t particularly spectacular or inventive, but it has charm by the bucketload and a supremely weepy ending. The best talking-dinosaur film.

3 One Million Years BC (1966)

Even compared with some of the duds on this list, One Million Years BC is wildly inaccurate. Human beings weren’t around 1m years ago and the last dinosaurs died tens of million of years before that. But your mind would have been blown in innumerable ways had you watched Harryhausen’s spectacular dinosaur animation in a cinema in the 60s.

2 King Kong (2005)

I have opted for Peter Jackson’s 2005 behemoth, but feel free to sub in your preferred Kong. While New York is the setting for the famous climax, the real fun is had back on Skull Island. This is where Kong goes at it with a prehistoric beast, fending off an attack so savagely that his power will never again be underestimated.

1 Jurassic Park (1993)

How could it be anything else? Jurassic Park is more than a film; it is a line in the sand after which the modern blockbuster came into being. It is a marvel of technological progress and (mostly) accurate creature depictions, tied to a propulsive plot that understands exactly which buttons it needs to press at any given moment. An incontestable classic, this film will still be top of the list a century from now.

Action and adventure films
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Will There Ever Be Another Great Dinosaur Movie?

Carefully crafted dinosaurs are an important part of any movie featuring the prehistoric creatures. But a good story is just as important, if not more so

Riley Black

Science Correspondent

It has been almost 20 years since Jurassic Park came out. That film—a heavy-handed morality fable about leaving Nature well enough alone—remains the best dinosaur film ever made. Even the two sequels didn’t come close to the quality of the increasingly dated first installment . And all this makes me wonder: Will there ever be another great dinosaur movie?

Most dinosaur movies are awful. That much is beyond dispute. (If you disagree, watch the Carnosaur series and get back to me.) The fact that dinosaurs are made-to-order movie monsters—easily accessed through conceits of time travel, lost worlds and increasingly, genetic engineering—has made them top picks for films in need of charismatic creatures. And more often than not, the dinosaurs are only there to threaten our protagonists as the embodiment of nature’s wrath. The only thing that changes is exactly how humans and dinosaurs are brought in contact with one another. And that’s the critical element so many screenwriters and directors have skimped on.

I have no doubt that dinosaurs will always have a place in Hollywood. The more we learn about them, the stranger and more wonderful they become. And despite being discovered over a century ago, Tyrannosaurus rex remains the uncontested symbol of prehistoric ferocity. As much as I love dinosaurs, though, I can’t help but feel that the creatures are poorly served by the scripts and plotlines that invoke them. Jurassic Park , based on Michael Crichton’s bestselling novel, was magnificent because it outlined a new route for dinosaurs to come stomping back into our world. The film gradually traced the story of how the dinosaurs came to exist and used that premise to present further mysteries about how creatures that were supposedly under human control could come back to power so quickly. The movie, like the book, wasn’t so much about dinosaurs as it was about our desire to control nature and the unexpected consequences that come out of that compulsion.

Jurassic Park worked as well as it did because of the human story. As ham-fisted as the plot was, the overarching commentary about the manipulation of nature drove the story. (The original Gojira trod similar ground before. New, powerful technology spawned horrific consequences.) The film wasn’t perfect by any means, but it’s still the best of what prehistoric cinema has to offer. Dinosaurs served the storyline. The storyline didn’t serve the dinosaurs. And that’s where so many dinosaur features have failed. Spend enough money and hire the right experts, and you can have the best dinosaurs money can buy. But without a compelling story, those monsters will aimlessly wander the screen, chomping up whoever blunders into their path. Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong featured a slew of dinosaurs, for example, but the computer-generated creatures were only there for massive set pieces. And while the virtual dinosaurs ably fulfilled their roles as ferocious antagonists, they were there only to threaten Kong and the imperiled human crew.

Well-rendered, carefully crafted dinosaurs are an important part of any movie featuring the prehistoric creatures. But a good story is just as important, if not more so. What’s the good of bringing dinosaurs to life if you’re constantly rooting for them to thin out the annoying and aimless cast? That’s the way I felt about Jurassic Park III —I kept wishing that the Velociraptor pack would enact swift vengeance on most of the film’s principal players. And during Disney’s cloyingly anthropomorphic Dinosaur , all I wanted was for the silent Carnotaurus to dispatch some of the yammering herbivores.

With the exception of movies that feature only dinosaurs, such as the aforementioned Dinosaur , dinosaur films are about the relationship between humans and creatures like Triceratops . Like any other monsters or creatures, dinosaurs are best used when exploring grander themes—often about time, evolution, extinction and how we interact with nature. Without that component, you might as well be watching a violent video game that you can’t actually play. A monster works only if it means something—if there’s some lesson to be learned from the curved claws and ragged jaws.

I certainly hope that there will be another great dinosaur film—a movie that isn’t just a hit with fans of the prehistoric but that can stand on its own merits as art. A new way to bring people and dinosaurs into contact would certainly help open new possibilities, but even among the classic subgenres, there’s still plenty of opportunity to write human-centered stories that employ dinosaurs to keep the narrative moving along at a brisk pace. I don’t think that Jurassic Park IV , if it ever comes to be, is going to do much to revitalize dinosaurs in cinema—especially since it seems the story is going to revolve around genetically engineered abberations —but we are only really limited by what we can think of. Dinosaurs don’t have to be kitsch, kid’s stuff, or ineffectual monsters. In the right hands, they can again embody our fascinations and fears. I eagerly await the day when such dramatic and deadly creatures once again stomp across the screen.

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Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is a freelance science writer specializing in evolution, paleontology and natural history who blogs regularly for Scientific American .

Screen Rant

Adam driver fights dinosaurs in 65 movie trailer.

The first 65 movie trailer has been released by Sony, providing the first look at Adam Driver's new sci-fi film from the writers of A Quiet Place.

The first look at Adam Driver's new sci-fi film has arrived as Sony releases the first 65 movie trailer. Following his stint with Star Wars playing Kylo Ren, Adam Driver returns to the sci-fi movie genre in 2023. 65 stars Driver as an astronaut who becomes stranded on Earth 65 million years ago. The original sci-fi film is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the duo who wrote A Quiet Place . Sam Raimi also produced the movie, which was put into development by Sony in 2020 ahead of a planned 2022 release date.

After Sony elected to delay the highly anticipated sci-fi film to 2023, the studio has now finally released the first 65 movie trailer, providing the first look at Adam Driver's new potential franchise. The trailer shows Adam Driver's astronaut character crash land on an unknown planet with at least one other survivor, but they soon discover that they are on a prehistoric Earth filled with dinosaurs trying to kill them. Check out the 65 movie trailer below:

Related: Every Upcoming Adam Driver Movie

Everything We Know About Adam Driver's 65 Movie

Thanks to the first 65 movie trailer, many more details about Adam Driver's new sci-fi movie have now been revealed. It appears that the movie incorporates time travel somehow to explain how a futuristic astronaut leading an expedition mission crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago. The trailer also confirms that Arianna Greenblatt plays one of the other passengers on his spaceship. It was previously announced that Marry Me star Chloe Coleman also has a role in 65 , but it is not known what role she plays based on the trailer.

The big reveal from the 65 movie trailer is that Adam Driver's nemesis in the sci-fi film is dinosaurs. While he believes they are aliens at first, he soon comes to discover that the monsters hunting him and Greenblatt's character down are prehistoric animals. The 65 movie trailer only provides a few glimpses of the dinosaurs featured in the movie, which is likely a sign of how big of a role they will have in the movie. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods know from A Quiet Place that using the monsters sparingly can help increase the tension (and save on the budget), so they could be using the same technique for 65 .

Now that the 65 movie trailer has arrived, anticipation should start to grow for the movie ahead of its March 10, 2023, release date. Adam Driver remains one of the best actors working in Hollywood today, so seeing him tackle an original sci-fi movie where he fights dinosaurs is certainly enticing. If 65 movie becomes another A Quiet Place -level hit for Beck and Woods, they could be responsible for launching another new franchise in Hollywood too.

More: A Quiet Place Complete Timeline Explained

Source: Sony

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Chronological List of Dinosaur Movies

Movies or TV
IMDb Rating
In Theaters
Release Year

1. The Primitive Man (1914)

32 min | Short, Adventure, Drama

A primitive tribe are attacked by apemen and menaced by various prehistoric monsters.

Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Robert Harron , Mae Marsh , William J. Butler , Wilfred Lucas

2. The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915)

5 min | Comedy, Short, Animation

Three cavemen court Miss Araminta Rockface. She favors the one who apparently slew the Missing Link ... but a dinosaur did the deed.

Director: Willis H. O'Brien

3. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Approved | 80 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

A ferocious dinosaur awakened by an Arctic atomic test terrorizes the North Atlantic and, ultimately, New York City.

Director: Eugène Lourié | Stars: Paul Hubschmid , Paula Raymond , Cecil Kellaway , Kenneth Tobey

Votes: 8,716 | Gross: $5.00M

4. The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)

Approved | 79 min | Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi

An American cowboy living in Mexico discovers his cattle are being eaten by a giant prehistoric dinosaur.

Directors: Edward Nassour , Ismael Rodríguez | Stars: Guy Madison , Patricia Medina , Carlos Rivas , Mario Navarro

Votes: 1,879

5. The Animal World (1956)

Approved | 82 min | Documentary, Animation, History

A documentary showcasing the world's many different animal species, both past and present.

Director: Irwin Allen | Stars: Theodore von Eltz , John Storm

6. The Giant Behemoth (1959)

Not Rated | 80 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

Marine atomic tests cause changes in the ocean's ecosystem resulting in dangerous blobs of radiation and the resurrection of a dormant dinosaur that threatens London.

Director: Eugène Lourié | Stars: Gene Evans , André Morell , John Turner , Leigh Madison

Votes: 2,902

7. Creature of Destruction (1968)

Unrated | 80 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

A hypnotist is able to predict murders by a terrifying sea monster. In reality, he causes the murders through his lovely assistant, who is the reincarnation of the monster.

Director: Larry Buchanan | Stars: Les Tremayne , Pat Delaney , Aron Kincaid , Neil Fletcher

8. Destroy All Monsters (1968)

G | 88 min | Action, Adventure, Horror

At the end of the 20th century, all of Earth's monsters have been safely rounded up and sent to Monsterland for scientific study. Chaos erupts when a race of she-aliens known as the Kilaaks unleashes the monsters on the world.

Directors: Ishirô Honda , Jun Fukuda | Stars: Akira Kubo , Jun Tazaki , Yukiko Kobayashi , Yoshio Tsuchiya

Votes: 7,553

9. Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)

Not Rated | 2 min | Animation, Short, Comedy

Bambi is contentedly nibbling the grass, seemingly unaware of his impending encounter with Godzilla. What will happen when the two finally meet?

Director: Marv Newland

Votes: 6,468

10. The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

PG | 85 min | Adventure, Crime, Fantasy

A meteor that crashed into Oregon's Crater Lake unearths a dinosaur egg. The heat from the meteor causes the egg to hatch, and the emerging dinosaur takes to snacking on the locals.

Director: William R. Stromberg | Stars: Richard Cardella , Glen Roberts , Mark Siegel , Bob Hyman

Votes: 1,686

11. The Last Dinosaur (1977)

Not Rated | 106 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A wealthy big game hunter and his group become trapped in prehistoric times where they are stalked by a ferocious dinosaur.

Directors: Alexander Grasshoff , Tsugunobu Kotani | Stars: Richard Boone , Joan Van Ark , Steven Keats , Luther Rackley

12. Caveman (1981)

PG | 91 min | Comedy, Romance

A caveman seeks revenge on a much larger competitor for the hand of a beautiful cavewoman.

Director: Carl Gottlieb | Stars: Ringo Starr , Dennis Quaid , Shelley Long , Jack Gilford

Votes: 8,597 | Gross: $15.97M

13. WarGames (1983)

PG | 114 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.

Director: John Badham | Stars: Matthew Broderick , Ally Sheedy , John Wood , Dabney Coleman

Votes: 110,587 | Gross: $79.57M

14. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)

PG | 95 min | Adventure, Family, Sci-Fi

A paleontologist and her husband discover a mother and baby brontosaurus in Africa, and try to protect them from a group of hunters intent on capturing the dinosaurs.

Director: Bill Norton | Stars: William Katt , Sean Young , Patrick McGoohan , Julian Fellowes

Votes: 3,505 | Gross: $14.97M

15. Dinosaur! (1985 TV Movie)

60 min | Documentary

Everything you want to know about dinosaurs.

Director: Robert Guenette | Stars: Christopher Reeve , Robert Bakker , Philip Currie , John Horner

16. Dennis the Menace (1987 TV Movie)

G | 118 min | Family, Comedy

The lives of young Dennis Mitchell, his family, and friends are turned upside down after he finds a dinosaur bone in his backyard and it catches of the attention of a famous paleontologist.

Director: Doug Rogers | Stars: William Windom , Jim Jansen , Patricia Estrin , Patsy Garrett

17. Adventures in Dinosaur City (1991)

PG | 88 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy

A scientist's kids are sucked into a TV screen and wind up in the Stone Age with cavemen and dinosaurs.

Director: Brett Thompson | Stars: Marc Martorana , Tony Doyle , R.A. Mihailoff , Don Barnes

Votes: 1,238

18. Carnosaur (1993)

R | 83 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

A genetically manipulated and very hungry dinosaur escapes from a bioengineering company and wreaks havoc on the local desert town. A security guard and a girl environmentalist try to stop both it and the company's doomsday bioweapon.

Directors: Adam Simon , Darren Patrick Moloney | Stars: Diane Ladd , Raphael Sbarge , Jennifer Runyon , Harrison Page

Votes: 4,358 | Gross: $1.75M

19. Carnosaur 2 (1995)

R | 83 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

A team of scientists go to a nuclear mining facility to investigate a possible meltdown and instead find a large amount of cloned dinosaurs.

Director: Louis Morneau | Stars: John Savage , Cliff De Young , Don Stroud , Rick Dean

Votes: 2,247

20. Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

R | 85 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

International terrorists get a surprise when their cargo turns out to contain living dinosaurs. The army commando team now have to think fast, if they want to prevent the extinction of the human species, instead of the reptiles.

Director: Jonathan Winfrey | Stars: Rob Camilletti , Stephen Lee , Cyril O'Reilly , Scott Valentine

Votes: 2,065

21. Barney's Great Adventure (1998)

G | 76 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama

A talking purple dinosaur leads a group of children on a hunt for a large missing egg.

Director: Steve Gomer | Stars: George Hearn , Shirley Douglas , Trevor Morgan , Alan Fawcett

Votes: 3,641 | Gross: $11.14M

22. Dinosaur (2000)

PG | 82 min | Animation, Adventure, Drama

An orphaned dinosaur raised by lemurs joins an arduous trek to a sanctuary after a meteorite shower destroys his family home.

Directors: Eric Leighton , Ralph Zondag | Stars: D.B. Sweeney , Julianna Margulies , Samuel E. Wright , Alfre Woodard

Votes: 67,148 | Gross: $137.75M

23. The Dinosaur Hunter (2000 TV Movie)

82 min | Adventure, Drama

A 13-year-old girl and her older brother live on a farm where paleontologists search for fossils.

Director: Rick Stevenson | Stars: Wendy Anderson , Russell Badger , Alan Bratt , Joely Collins

24. Dinosaur Hunters (1996 TV Movie)

Documentary

More than 80 million years ago, the Oviraptor, a strange bird-like dinosaur, walked the sandy banks of an oasis in what is now the "Gobi in Mongolia." A creature that measured some 8 feet ... See full summary »

Stars: Michael Carroll , Glen Gould , Roy Chapman Andrews , Mark Norell

25. The Dinosaur Hunters (2002 TV Movie)

Not Rated | 120 min | Biography, Drama

One man who kept asking questions was Gideon Mantell, the amateur paleontologist who, in the early 19th century, fought to get the British scientific establishment to accept Britain had ... See full summary »

Director: Andrew Piddington | Stars: Henry Ian Cusick , Paul Brightwell , Michelle Bunyan , Alan Cox

26. Dinocroc (2004)

R | 90 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

After an African dinosaur ancestor of the crocodile is found, Dr. Campbell uses its DNA to create prototypes at Paula Kennedy's Gereco lab.

Director: Kevin O'Neill | Stars: Costas Mandylor , Charles Napier , Bruce Weitz , Matt Borlenghi

Votes: 2,023

27. Anonymous Rex (2004 TV Movie)

Unrated | 89 min | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Failed TV pilot about an alternate present day reality where a dinosaur society secretly co-exists with humans using futuristic cloaking technology. Two dinosaur private detectives investigate a murder connected to a strange dinosaur cult.

Director: Julian Jarrold | Stars: Sam Trammell , Daniel Baldwin , Stephanie Lemelin , Tamara Gorski

28. Tyrannosaurus Azteca (2007)

Not Rated | 86 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

A band of 16th century conquistadors must fight for their lives when they realize they're going to be served as sacrifices to a god-like T-Rex.

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith | Stars: Ian Ziering , Marco Sanchez , Kalani Queypo , Dichen Lachman

Votes: 1,080

29. Dinosaur Hunters! (2008)

15 min | Short

A class of second graders go to the dinosaur museum. One curious little girl thinks she sees something and... the chase is on! In her search for a little green dinosaur, that teases and ... See full summary »

Director: John Arthur Little | Stars: Jack Horner , Elizabeth Little

30. 100 Million BC (2008 Video)

R | 85 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A scientist leads a team of Navy SEALs back in time to the Cretaceous Period to rescue the first team he sent back during the 1940s. Things go wildly when he accidentally brings a giant dinosaur back into Los Angeles.

Director: Griff Furst | Stars: Michael Gross , Christopher Atkins , Greg Evigan , Marie Westbrook

Votes: 4,775

31. Dinocroc vs. Supergator (2010 TV Movie)

Not Rated | 87 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

Created in the laboratories of a biotech corporation, two ravenous mega-reptiles level everything in their way. Now, three defenders must try to save the day. Who shall live and who shall die in the battle between Dinocroc and Supergator?

Director: Jim Wynorski | Stars: David Carradine , Rib Hillis , Amy Holt , John Callahan

Votes: 2,219

32. Adhisaya Ulagam (2012)

Adventure, Sci-Fi

Director: Shakthi Scott | Stars: Livingston , Sreelakshmy N. Nair , Mannan Prithiv Raj , Anandha Kannan

33. Back to the Jurassic (2012)

PG | 86 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy

Three kids who travel back in time to 65 million years ago, where they are taken in by a dinosaur.

Directors: Yoon-suk Choi , John Kafka | Stars: Melanie Griffith , Jane Lynch , William Baldwin , Stephen Baldwin

Votes: 1,676

34. Cowboys vs Dinosaurs (2015 TV Movie)

Not Rated | 89 min | Action, Adventure, Horror

After an accidental explosion at a local mine, dinosaurs emerge from the rubble to terrorize a small western town. Now, a group of gunslingers must defend their home if anyone is going to survive in a battle of cowboys versus dinosaurs.

Director: Ari Novak | Stars: Eric Roberts , Rib Hillis , Casey Fitzgerald , Vernon Wells

Votes: 1,638

35. Dinosaur! (2009)

2 min | Animation, Short, Action

Lava People, talking skyscrapers, smiling suns, and oh yeah, a very destructive dinosaur.

Directors: Stephen Spector , Courtney Smith , Sindy Wilson | Star: Kenny Farino

36. Dinosaur (1998)

Short, Adventure

A short film setting up the dinosaur attraction ride at Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Director: Jerry Rees

37. Dinosaur (I) (2011)

77 min | Animation

Directors: Jason Stamp , The Tilford Brothers

38. Dinosaur (1975)

67 min | Drama

While a near-future Britain is paralysed by a general strike, an experimental theatre group continue touring.

Director: Tony Bicât | Stars: Ann Engel , Will Knightley , Denis Lawson , Stephen Whittaker

39. Dinosaur (1980)

14 min | Animation, Short

Director: Will Vinton | Star: Michele Mariana

40. Dinosaur (1993)

Animation, Short

Director: Sarah Watt

41. Dinosaur (2006)

21 min | Short, Crime, Drama

Director: James Branscome | Stars: Ron Barr , James Branscome , Aaron Curtis , James DeHaven

42. Dinosaur (II) (2011)

14 min | Short, Drama, Mystery

Seth's search for his missing sister uncovers a haunting secret from the past.

Director: Jonathan Frey | Stars: Rachael Bean , Jacob McManus , Nathan Templet

43. Dinosaur (2011 Video)

16 min | Short, Comedy

A sexually frustrated dinosaur combats his primal desires when he meets a wholesome young lady who could change his self-centered ways.

Director: Clayton Williamson | Stars: W. Scott Parker III , Shelley Bassett , June Dare , Laura DeBar

44. Dinosaur (2013)

21 min | Short, Comedy, Drama

Government employee Bu Mansour strives to change his job title before his retirement.

Director: Meqdad Al-Kout

45. Magic in the Water (1995)

PG | 101 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Two siblings find out about a mythical aquatic monster and try to a save a remote Canadian lake from being used as a dump site for toxic waste.

Director: Rick Stevenson | Stars: Mark Harmon , Harley Jane Kozak , Joshua Jackson , Sarah Wayne

Votes: 2,119 | Gross: $2.64M

46. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Not Rated | 12 min | Animation, Short, Comedy

The cartoonist, Winsor McCay, brings the Dinosaurs back to life in the figure of his latest creation, Gertie the Dinosaur.

Director: Winsor McCay | Stars: Winsor McCay , George McManus , Roy L. McCardell , Thomas A. 'Tad' Dorgan

Votes: 3,651

47. The Dinosaur Project (2012)

PG-13 | 83 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

A British expedition formed by the lead researcher Jonathan Marchant, his assistant, a doctor and a TV crew, travels to Congo to seek evidence of a dinosaur.

Director: Sid Bennett | Stars: Richard Dillane , Peter Brooke , Matt Kane , Natasha Loring

Votes: 5,847

48. A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)

Not Rated | 82 min | Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

In a post-Armageddon world, a young woman finds herself in a fight for survival against mutant cavemen, dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.

Director: Brett Piper | Stars: Paul Guzzi , Linda Corwin , Alex Pirnie , Mark Deshaies

Votes: 1,787

49. A Plastic Toy Dinosaur (2006)

10 min | Short, Drama

Morgan, a 9 year old boy is picked up by his absentee father, Rod for his weekly visit. By the end of the day, Morgan has realised that his dad is just as fragile and immature as himself, ... See full summary »

Director: Benjamin Bee | Stars: Benjamin Bee , Penelope Granycome , Dan Mersh , Ainsley Mitchell

50. March of the Dinosaurs (2011 TV Movie)

87 min | Documentary, Animation, Drama

Set 70 million years ago in the Cretaceous period in North America, this animated documentation/drama follows the journey of a young Edmontosaurus named Scar and his herd as they migrate ... See full summary »

Director: Matthew Thompson | Stars: Stephen Fry , Simon Kerr

51. Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (1985)

Unrated | 88 min | Action, Adventure, Horror

A small plane carrying fossil hunters crashes in the Amazon jungle, and the survivors must battle their way through cannibals, wild animals, and slave traders.

Director: Michele Massimo Tarantini | Stars: Michael Sopkiw , Suzane Carvalho , Milton Rodríguez , Marta Anderson

Votes: 2,413

52. The Dinosaur Hunter (2000 TV Movie)

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‘The Greatest Hits’: Save your time

A time-travel romance falls victim to generic characters and clunky dialogue.

You know how a pop song from a moment in your past can bring that moment back to life in colors, smells, memories and emotions? “The Greatest Hits” takes that idea and literalizes it right into the ground.

The film is one of those romantic fantasies that enlists time travel as the primary obstacle keeping two people from getting together. Make that one of the obstacles; the others in “The Greatest Hits” are the heroine’s growing collection of vinyl records and her habit of wearing noise-canceling headphones wherever she goes. The course of true love never did run smooth.

Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is mourning the loss of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) in a car crash that also delivered a bonk to her noggin that allows her to whoosh back in time — but only when she hears a song that triggers a moment the couple had together. Thus the headphones; otherwise, the tunes streaming from supermarket speakers and other people’s car radios would have her constantly yo-yoing back and forth between then and now. The records she’s obsessively collecting are an effort to find the one song that might give her a chance to alter events and keep Max alive.

Does any of this make sense? Of course not. Time-travel romantic fantasy movies never make sense, and when they’re done right, that’s the source of their idiot charm. 2006’s “The Lake House,” which involves Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock and a magic mailbox, is a personal gold standard in this regard.

Complicating matters is that Harriet has met a cute guy at a grief counseling support group — that sentence alone announces we’re in Los Angeles — and is hesitant to open up and tell him about the whole trying-to-change-the-flow-of-history thing. David, who has lost both parents to either separate illnesses or just plain carelessness, is played by Justin H. Min, a likable actor who was the sensitive android of the little-seen “After Yang” (2022), a movie that you would be strongly advised to watch instead of this one.

What would it take to make “The Greatest Hits” work? For one thing, a music-rights budget that allowed for songs an average filmgoer might recognize, rather than tracks from the back 40 of Spotify or a disco remix of Roxy Music’s “To Turn You On.” For another, a script that avoids dialogue clunkers like “There’s a reason that in some languages, the word for love and the word for suffering is the same.” (I Googled it — didn’t find any.) Shopworn supporting stereotypes like the heroine’s sassy gay Black friend (Austin Crute) don’t help.

The prime offender, though, is writer-director Ned Benson’s inability to create three-dimensional characters, or even believable two-dimensional ones. Harriet is apparently a record producer, but we only know that from one dated reference to Alan Parsons and a brief scene of her telling singer Nelly Furtado to “add a little more compression on the drums”; otherwise, she’s an attractive blank space that Boynton strains too hard to fill in. The dead boyfriend, Max, is even more generic — a genial himbo with all the flavor of a catalogue model.

Benson made a stir with his debut, a three-film project called “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” (2014) that looked at a relationship from his, her and their points of view. His belated follow-up, by contrast, has barely enough personality for one. But he gets points for including the dreadful Kars4Kids jingle as one of the audio jogs that sends Harriet tumbling back in time — for a brief moment, the rest of “The Greatest Hits” seems much less irritating in comparison.

PG-13. Streaming on Hulu. Drug use, strong language and suggestive material. 94 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com .

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A brief guide to birdwatching in the age of dinosaurs

H ave you ever wondered what it would be like travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs? If you stumble upon a time machine, remember to bring your binoculars. Birdwatching is a popular hobby today, with an around 3 million participants in the UK alone, and in our modern world there are a staggering 11,000 species of birds to spot.

Despite the popularity of their modern-day descendants, we often forget about ancient birds because of their more famous dinosaur cousins.

Birds are actually a type of dinosaur . They are closely related to smaller, agile meat-eating dinosaurs such as the Velociraptor. Ancient birds came in a variety of forms, from ones with teeth and claws to species barely distinguishable from farmyard chickens .

So, if you were to point your binoculars over the heads of Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, what could you spot? Here is a quick introduction to six of the most interesting ancient bird species.

Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx is the iconic "dino-bird" from the Jurassic period. The discovery of Archaeopteryx fossils in Germany over 150 years ago provided scientists with the first clues about the link between dinosaurs and modern birds.

At first glance, the skeleton of Archaeopteryx is just like any other meat-eating dinosaur—sharp teeth, clawed hands and a long bony tail. Surrounding the skeleton of specimens such as the Berlin Archaeopteryx (discovered between 1874 and 1876 ) however, are imprints of feathers which form a pair of distinctly bird-like wings.

But for many years, paleontologists debated whether Archaeopteryx could have used these wings to fly. Scientists now think it is likely that Archaeopteryx could have flown, but only in short bursts , like a pheasant. Recent technological advances have given us our first insights into dinosaur color and studies of fossilized, pigmented cells have shown that Archaeopteryx had matt black wing feathers.

Confuciusornis

This crow-sized bird had a beak like that of modern-day birds, but still had large, dinosaur-like claws on its hands. It is thought that they lived in flocks, large numbers of which were killed by ash or gas in volcanic eruptions and preserved as fossils. Known from over 1,000 fossil specimens from China, Confuciusornis is one of the most common fossil bird species.

Some of these birds had a pair of tail feathers longer than their body, while others lacked these long feathers and would have looked comparatively stumpy. Scientists think these long-tailed birds were the males of the species and those with short tails were females . Like modern peacocks and peahens, the males probably used their extravagant tail feathers to woo the females.

Falcatakely

Discovered in 2020, Falcatakely , from Madagascar, would have resembled a small, buck-toothed toucan. Its oversized, banana-shaped bill only had teeth at the very tip . Although we don't know what this buck-toothed bird would have eaten, its close relatives ate a variety of food , including fruit, fish and even larger prey.

Scientists think that birds such as Falcatakely could fly the same day they hatched from their egg , unlike birds today which spend their first weeks or months helpless in the nest.

Hesperornis

One of the weirdest birds from the age of dinosaurs, Hesperornis would have looked something like a six-foot-tall penguin with a beak full of sharp teeth . Its tiny arms would have made T rex look like a weightlifter, so it definitely couldn't have used them to fly.

Instead, Hesperornis used its oversized feet to propel itself through the water like a modern cormorant. Out of the water, Hesperornis walked awkwardly upright and probably couldn't travel far overland.

Vegavis and Asteriornis

Towards the end of the dinosaurs' reign, the earliest groups of modern birds began to appear. The first of these birds to be discovered was Vegavis from Antarctica, which in the time of dinosaurs would have been covered in trees rather than ice.

It was probably an ancestor of ducks and geese and one exceptional fossil of Vegavis even has a rare preserved vocal organ . Analysis of this fossil suggested that Vegavis couldn't make a songbird melody but could have made simple noises such as goose-like honks.

Sixty-six million years ago, not long before the asteroid impact , which caused the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, lived Asteriornis . This quail-sized bird from Belgium was an ancestor of modern ducks and chickens. Although it would have looked unremarkable compared to the giant swimming lizards and huge, toothed seagulls it lived alongside, this may have been to its advantage.

Scientists think that the small size of birds such as Asteriornis helped them to survive the mass extinction . Because smaller animals need less food and take less time to reproduce, these humble birds were able to survive and evolve into the birds you can see through your binoculars today.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Provided by The Conversation

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A Dinosaur Dream Adventure: Travel Back in Time with an Amazing Dinosaur Book for Kids (Reach for the Stars: Children Books Ages 2-10)

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A Dinosaur Dream Adventure: Travel Back in Time with an Amazing Dinosaur Book for Kids (Reach for the Stars: Children Books Ages 2-10) Paperback – July 17, 2023

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Join Sam, a young explorer with an insatiable curiosity for dinosaurs, and his faithful dog companion, Spot, on an unforgettable journey. In a dreamlike encounter, they unearth a magical dinosaur egg that hatches into Ross, a lovable baby Brontosaurus with a special ability to travel through time. Together, they delve into a prehistoric realm where lush jungles, towering dinosaurs, and thrilling escapades await. As the meteor shower looms, threatening the safety of the dinosaurs, Sam, Spot, and Ross must summon their courage and lead the way to a shelter, teaching the dinosaurs about bravery, teamwork, and the enduring power of friendship. With whimsical illustrations that bring the prehistoric world to life, " A Dinosaur Dream Adventure" is a captivating children's book that combines the thrill of dinosaurs, the magic of time travel, and the heartwarming lessons of bravery and friendship. Perfect for young readers who dream of exploring the ancient world, this enchanting tale will leave them eager for more dino-filled escapades. Get ready for a roaring adventure that will transport young minds back in time and ignite their imagination! Grab Your Copy Now! Tags: dinosaur book, dinosaur book for kids, dinosaur book for kids 5-7, dinosaur book for kids 3-5, dinosaur facts book for kids, dinosaur facts book, teamwork book kids, friendship book kids

Reading age 2 - 10 years
Part of series Reach for the Stars: Children Books Ages 2-10
Print length 30 pages
Language English
Dimensions 8.5 x 0.08 x 8.5 inches
Publication date July 17, 2023
ISBN-13 979-8852581877
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CCC7BHVQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (July 17, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 30 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8852581877
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 2 - 10 years
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.53 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.08 x 8.5 inches
#97 in Disaster Books for Children
#631 in Children's Dinosaur Books (Books)
#1,190 in Children's Books on Health

About the author

J.p anthony williams.

J.P Anthony Williams is a bestselling children's book author, known for his enchanting tales and vivid illustrations. His stories are loved by young readers all over the world.

Born and raised in a small town, J.P developed a love of nature and storytelling at an early age. He spent his childhood exploring the woods and fields near his home, and he loved nothing more than curling up with a good book.

J.P's stories are known for their vivid imagery and richly-detailed illustrations. He takes inspiration from the natural world and from the myths and legends of his childhood, and he weaves them into tales that are both entertaining and educational.

In his free time, J.P can be found exploring new places and seeking inspiration for his next book. He is also a big advocate for environmental conservation, and often uses his platform to raise awareness about nature and its preservation.

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‘The Greatest Hits’ Review: Yes, She Could Turn Back Time.

A high-concept movie about music and grief lacks follow through.

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In an outdoor space bathed in magenta light, a woman and a man stand close to one another, heads touching, smiling. They both are wearing headphones around their necks.

By Alissa Wilkinson

“The Greatest Hits” literalizes the familiar heartache: You’re driving down the road, radio blaring at full tilt. Suddenly that song comes on, the one that reminds you of your ex, or of a time that was joyous but now is a sadness-tinged memory. Plunged back into that head space, you feel as though you’ve traveled through time. And the longing it prompts can be unbearable.

This is where Harriet (Lucy Boynton) finds herself, except instead of feeling as if she’s moving through time, she is truly hurtling through the fourth dimension. Since having lost her boyfriend, Max (David Corenswet), in a tragic accident, any song Harriet hears attached to memories of him catapults her, quite literally, back to the moment in their relationship when that song was playing. When she leaves the house, she wears noise-canceling headphones to protect against unexpected time travel provoked by radios and errant Spotify shuffles.

At home, though, she spends her nights trying to slip backward. Harriet has become obsessed with trying to return to a moment where she can set the world straight and ensure that Max won’t die, which means, even two years after his death, that she is still “hiding out in her grief,” as another character puts it. In the midst of this, at her grief support group, Harriet meets a nice guy named David (Justin H. Min), who’s dealing with loss of his own.

Ned Benson, who wrote and directed “The Greatest Hits,” has explored this territory before. His previous work, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby,” was a trilogy, made up of two films that explored a couple’s grief-stricken, tumultuous relationship from each of their individual perspectives, and a third that combined them. (As the title suggests, music was part of the story, too.) That film felt personal, and so does this one. It earnestly evokes the way grief mires us in memory, making us feel as if our personal timelines are slip-sliding and looping, eternally arrested in the past. Moving forward seems impossible.

But “The Greatest Hits” lacks the imagination of “Eleanor Rigby” and, at times, seems like it might be in the wrong genre. It’s easy to imagine a rom-com version of this movie, since the elements are all there — the hip location (mostly the Silver Lake and Los Feliz neighborhoods of Los Angeles), the meet-cute, the queer best friend (a mainstay of the genre , for better or worse), the crates of vinyl records, the pining, the hot guys, even the chemistry. But this movie lacks the lightness and humor of a rom-com, which might balance out all the dreary moments and make it feel more watchable. The version that exists feels more suited for lovelorn teens just off their first breakup than adults moving through profound loss and sorrow, more acquainted with the ways life can’t just stop when tragedy strikes.

“The Greatest Hits” proceeds slowly and repetitively, which doesn’t have to be a problem: The gentleness of the pace and storytelling gives the cast space to breathe and react to each other, to build relationships that feel reasonably authentic. Similarly, the music choices (which are all over the map both in genre and era) are fun and fresh, lacking the on-the-nose quality that a film with more bang-on choices might have provoked. But as it goes on, the movie begins to feel mired in its own high-concept conceit without space to develop it further. Is there a reason the only music that triggers time travel for Harriet is connected to Max? Are there tunes that throw her back to times she prefers not to remember? Why is it important to recall that she used to be a music producer?

There’s an interesting film dancing around the edges of “The Greatest Hits,” but there’s both too much sentimentality and not enough thought, and that’s too bad. For audiences in search of a good cry, it may still do the job. But for those of us for whom the music-driven time travel experience is still metaphorical, it’s cold comfort, a fantasy with no hope of fulfillment.

The Greatest Hits Rated PG-13 for some language and innuendo, plus conversations about death and grief. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Hulu.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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Le film Walking with Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Planet
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993)
Dino Time 2012 -- aka Back to the Jurassic -- A Time Travel Movie
THE TIME TRAVEL EXPERIENCE: Age of the Dinosaurs (SHORT FILM)
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VIDEO

Visit the past and celebrate Jurassic Park and Jurassic World at Smyths Toys🦖🌵🎁🦕 #smythstoys
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COMMENTS

A Sound of Thunder (2005)
A Sound of Thunder: Directed by Peter Hyams. With Armin Rohde, Heike Makatsch, Jemima Rooper, David Oyelowo. A single mistake in the past, by a time travel company in the future, has devastating and unforeseen consequences.
A Sound of Thunder (film)
Plot. In the year 2055, the Chicago-based Time Safari company offers the opportunity for rich people to hunt dinosaurs in the past via time travel technology. As a precaution against the potential change of the past, the company preys only on the dinosaurs who would otherwise die of natural causes and keeps the clients from stepping off the designated path.
Back to the Jurassic (2012)
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A Sound of Thunder
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We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993)
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A Sound of Thunder
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19 Theodore Rex (1995) If you had to imagine the last film you would want to see, a mid-90s buddy cop movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and a fully dressed, anthropomorphic, animatronic dinosaur ...
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Your man Salty reviews the trailer for the Sam Raimi directed '65' starring Adam Driver set to be released March 10, 2023. We look at the premise, casting, p...
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'65': Everything to Know About Adam Driver's New Sci-Fi Dinosaur Thriller
65: Everything You Need to Know About Adam Driver's New Sci-Fi Dinosaur Movie - Netflix Tudum. After surviving a crash landing, an astronaut and his passenger must outlast the perils of prehistoric Earth to reach their only hope for escape.
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A scientist leads a team of Navy SEALs back in time to the Cretaceous Period to rescue the first team he sent back during the 1940s. Things go wildly when he accidentally brings a giant dinosaur back into Los Angeles. Director: Griff Furst | Stars: Michael Gross, Christopher Atkins, Greg Evigan, Marie Westbrook. Votes: 4,775
List of films featuring dinosaurs
2D animation, The Land Before Time franchise: The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends: 2007: United States: 2D animation, The Land Before Time franchise: The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave: 2016: United States: 2D animation, The Land Before Time franchise: The Lego Batman Movie: 2017: United States: The Lego Movie 2: The ...
65 Is Not A Time Travel Movie (Despite Dinosaurs), Clarifies Adam Driver
65 star Adam Driver clarifies that there is no time travel in the movie, even though there are dinosaurs. After playing Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Driver makes his return to the science fiction genre in the action-heavy 65.Coming on the heels of the hugely successful Jurassic World trilogy, 65 tries to tap into the public's enduring fascination with dinosaurs, by having a ...
Only These 4 Dinosaurs Have Been In All 6 Jurassic Park Movies
The Jurassic Park franchise introduces an array of wacky and interesting prehistoric creatures throughout its installments, but only four dinosaurs consistently appear in every single movie. 1997's Jurassic Park, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, is still a huge success years later and has since spawned several movies and TV shows in Jurassic Park's franchise, entertaining ...
Adam Driver Fights Dinosaurs In 65 Movie Trailer
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'The Greatest Hits': Save your time
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