Millennium (1989)

Millennium (1989), directed by Michael Anderson.

quote

You see, this is the difficult thing about looking for time-travelers: they don't want to be found! You must look for them in places where people do not normally go. Or, where there are people that no one will ever see again.

...like on an airplane before it crashes. Body snatchers from the future. I think about this every time I fly.

It's a modest SF romance, but the IMDB rating of 5.4 is a bit harsh. I'm guessing the problem is that SF audiences are young males, and although they can tolerate a certain amount of romance (see Terminator (1984)), too much and they reject the girliness. Here, it's true, the romance plot is gooped on pretty thick. Plus we have to rerun certain scenes twice from new perspectives, which strains patience. Finally, Kris Kristofferson's obsession with Cheryl Ladd clouds his mind and ruins his judgment, making him less manly.

But it has exciting action scenes as well and they do exercise the time travel concept. His first and second times meeting her are her second and first times meeting him. They are on the same page for the third and fourth meetings, which is a relief. (Wait, I think I skipped one. Oh, well). It has nice paranoia moments: people from the future really do watch us, and sometimes you can feel it...

Paradox is in the nature of time travel. Visitors from the future try to minimize their impact but something always goes wrong. In particular, they're always dropping those stunners. After a night of hot sex (which must be hard to get in the year 3000, excepting with robots and mutants) she doesn't try very hard to keep him from going to the hanger. She could have tied him to the bed. And if her mission is to keep him from finding the stunner, couldn't she just pick it up before he does so? She knows where it is.

She manages to blow up the future, but maybe it's not her fault. The paradoxes just accumulate.

Screenplay by John Varley, based on a short story later expanded into a novel. I recall the short story was better, but it's been a while.

Netflix doesn't have the DVD, but cheap used copies are common.

http://watershade.net/public/millennium.jpg