Time Travel Movies, Ranked

Selected for the U.S. National Film Registry and holds a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score; its DeLorean and 88 mph became the genre's defining icons.

Won four Academy Awards, including Best Visual Effects for its groundbreaking liquid-metal CGI, and was the most expensive film ever made at the time. A rare sequel widely rated above its original.

So influential its title became shorthand for a repeating time loop, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 2006. Bill Murray's performance anchors a near-perfect comedy.

Made for a reported $7,000 budget yet won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; its labyrinthine timelines are famous for demanding diagrams to follow.

A 'live-die-repeat' loop premise executed with sharp editing and Emily Blunt; earned a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score and a devoted cult following.

Rian Johnson's hitman-meets-his-future-self thriller grossed over $176 million and drew praise for taking its closed-loop logic seriously.

Terry Gilliam's bleak fixed-timeline mystery earned Brad Pitt an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win; inspired by Chris Marker's La Jetée.

Launched the franchise and Cameron's career on a $6.4 million budget; added to the National Film Registry in 2008 for its bootstrap-paradox plot.

Adapts Robert Heinlein's '—All You Zombies—' into cinema's tightest causal-loop paradox, praised for Sarah Snook's dual-role performance.

A phone-booth time machine and history-project premise turned into an enduring cult comedy that spawned two sequels and an animated series.

Richard Curtis's romantic dramedy uses generational time travel as a lens on savoring ordinary life; a modest box-office hit that aged into a comfort favorite.

The crew slingshots back to 1986 San Francisco; the lightest, highest-grossing of the original-cast films and a fan-poll favorite.

A box-office flop on release that became a defining cult film through DVD, built on a cryptic tangent-universe time-loop mythology.

An unapologetically dumb 1980s-nostalgia comedy that turned a self-aware gimmick title into a modest hit and a sequel.

Jean-Claude Van Damme's highest-grossing lead vehicle; solid B-movie fun that spawned a short-lived TV series but never rose above genre pulp.

A ham-radio link across 30 years lets father and son alter the past; a well-liked emotional thriller that later became a CW series.

A commercial hit but critically panned at 34% on Rotten Tomatoes; its blackout-journal time-jumping grows increasingly lurid and silly.

H.G. Wells's great-grandson directed this remake, yet it landed at 28% on Rotten Tomatoes for hollow effects and a wasted Morlock premise.

A troubled adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel that flopped hard and sits at 13% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite a bestselling source novel, critics savaged it at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a later HBO series was cancelled after one season.