Excellent Adventures: The Time Travel Movie Podcast

Excellent Adventures: The Time Travel Movie Podcast

Three friends, Ellen, James and Paul, explore the hows and whens of time travel in the movies.

Episodes

June 5, 2026 35 mins

In this Mini Excellent Adventure, Ellen is joined by special guest Dr Jamie Steele, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Bath Spa University, to explore two distinctive visions of time, memory, and identity in Belgian cinema: Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr Nobody and Toto the Hero.

Together they discuss how both films approach time travel not through mac...

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It's time to relax & take in the mountain air with Paul, Ellen & James as they enjoy watching the same 2 minutes repeat over & over for the staff of a winter ryokan and restaurant in Kibune, Kyoto.

A Japanese comedy film directed by Junta Yamaguchi, written by Makoto Ueda, and starring Riko Fujitani. 

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1993 was the year not of one but two dinosaur movies from Steven Spielberg. The first was Jurassic Park (in a sense  maybe the DNA was a time travel device…) and the second movie is a much lesser-known title in Spielberg’s filmography as producer; namely We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story. Adapted from a book by Hudson Talbot, this animated movie (produced by the Amblimation studio that was established in London in 1989) tells the story ...

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Field of Dreams is a landmark fantasy / sports movie that was released in spring of 1989 across the US. It arrived in the UK late that same year. An adaptation of W.P.Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, the movie proved to be very popular in America and found an appreciative audience overseas.  Amidst the story’s richly expressed Americana, and its strain of fantasy and whimsy, the overarching character stories are convincingly explored...
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Paul invites longest-serving chum & model builder extraordinare Matt Peerless to chat about the time machine of Back to the Future: the DMC DeLorean sports car.

They discuss its history as a collectible, the versions across the trilogy & what makes the car the Star!

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A somewhat forgotten, lavishly produced science fiction road trip movie, Tomorrowland (2015) owes much to the folklore around Walt Disney and Disneyland. An adventure story about a trek to reach Tomorrowland, the movie has its time travel / time warping element to it as protagonists Frank, Casey and Athena embark on a journey that explores the value of pursuing dreams, the dynamic between humans and technology, past / present and f...

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In this mini excellent adventure, Ellen and her mum Joy dive into Samurai in Time, a film that blends some of their favourite cinematic flavours: slick swordplay, time-travel twists, and a peek behind the curtain of the film industry. Recorded on the drive home from Chichester Cinema at New Park, after a screening presented by the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme in 2025.

Links: https://www.jpf-film.org.uk/  https://chichest...

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Join Ellen, Paul and James in a wide-ranging discussion that begins with Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name.

 

What starts as an exploration of the film’s narrative - two strangers connected across time and space - expands into a ...

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Celebrating a whopping 50 episodes of Excellence. Ellen, James & Paul reflect on highlights of 2 years Podcasting together, lessons learned & what the Future still holds. Tune in & celebrate along with them!

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This episode, Paul Hosts & invites Ellen & James to a mini quiz on the cinema of the Summer of 1989. With the picture painted, it’s a race against Time to stop a devil of a scheme to undo creation itself.

 

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Robert Zemeckis, co-writer  and director of Back to the Future (1985), returns to the world of the time travel movie with this lively and very faithful adaptation of the Charles Dickens story.  Produced as a performance capture movie, and released in 2009, the film has a visual dynamism and invention to it that makes it an especially effective version of the source material.  Jim Carrey’s performance across several roles is fascina...
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Our Christmas special two-parter takes a festive leap through time (and film history) as we each pick our favourite Christmas Carol adaptation. Obviously, the correct choice is The Muppet Christmas Carol - which I selected, of course! Michael Caine delivers a perfectly straight-faced Scrooge performance amid singing frogs and bantering ghosts, but it’s Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) who truly steals the show. Narrating the story with u...

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This week, Ellen is joined by Jen Francis - a freelance TV producer and writer whose work spans original scripts, television development and sharp-eyed film criticism. Jen is also the author of Steve McQueen: In The Scene (2025), a new non-fiction study of the director’s craft.

https://www.aurorametro.com/product/steve-mcqueen-book/

...

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A visually arresting adaptation of the poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ , David Lowery’s film is fascinating. It’s a Christmas movie , for sure, and it includes a time travel thread in the tapestry of its tale. What more could you ask for? Inventive, and imbued with a tangible sense of magic, the film prompts an enthusiastic conversation between James and Ellen for this episode.

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James and Paul are MIA, but Ellen is forging ahead solo into the wonderfully absurd world of Hallmark Time Travel Movies. From pocket watches that open wormholes to Victorian men horrified by toasters, she breaks down the rules, the romance, and the time-bending tropes that make this subgenre so irresistibly unhinged.

Buckle up—time travel waits for no one!

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Time travel, medieval mayhem, and a crooning Yankee - what more could you want? Ellen, Paul, and James dive into A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) and its literary origins in Mark Twain’s groundbreaking novel.

 

Join them as they explore the surprising legacy of this ...

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Recorded over a 13 month period - the Excellent Adventurers are proud to present a chat with possibly the only person left on the planet who had not seen the Back to the Future trilogy - Ellen's Mum!

Paul captures the initial & eventual reactions to Parts I & III, while Ellen gets the complicated one in the middle with II! 

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The Time Travelling Trio return to the third in the trilogy for the second time. Huh?

Episode 14 was a Mini Excellent Adventure with guest Nigel Smith, who pipped for this as a favourite to chat about.

James & Paul felt left out, so promised Ellen she could do an episode about Hallmark movies, & so this grand revisit came about. In so many ways, the romance with Christopher Lloyd & Mary Steenbergen is just a big tease f...

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Paul's been wanting to explore David Lynch's twisty Noir nightmare with a like-minded admirer for ages. Is it Time Travel or Not? Paul asked this at a screening of the movie in 2024 at the Worthing Connaught - & is here joined by Film Manager of the cinema James Tully, to definitively put to bed & answer all mysteries of the film. I mean, how hard can it be?

Find the Worthing Connaught here: https://wtm.uk/ 

And here on Ins...

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Ellen, James & Paul explore "the Feels" within this charming Time Loop Romedy.

Kyle Allen & Kathryn Newton are living the same day over & are actually pretty happy about it. Then they start to question if there is a reason, & what would happen if they made a map of their findings. 

Sweet. Uplifting. Great to look at.

But enough about us - you should see the movie too. 

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