Best Nonlinear timeline Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of nonlinear timeline cinema — measured across 1,062 indexed frames from 14 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Nonlinear timeline films over-index on beanie, hoodie and stubble — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Michel GondryDP Ellen KurasIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Much to his surprise, timid Joel Barish is shocked to discover that the love of his life, sparky Clementine, has had him erased from her memory. To pay her back in the same coin, poor Joel summons up the courage to undergo a painless but intricate medical procedure to do the same, utterly unaware that darkness is an essential part of the light. Now, as hurt and angry Joel's ugly recollections of Clementine gradually fade away, giving way to a soulless black void, suddenly, he begins having second thoughts, toying with the idea of stopping the irreversible process. In the end, is ignorance really bliss?
- 2
Paranoid Park (2007)
Gus Van SantDP Christopher DoyleIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Gabe Nevinsas Alex
Dan Liuas Detective Richard Liu- Jake Milleras Jared
The teenager and skateboarder Alex is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu that is investigating the death of a security guard in the rail yards severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skate board. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.
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- Kanopy
- 3
Blue Valentine (2010)
Derek CianfranceDP Andrij ParekhIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Dean Pereira and Cindy Heller Pereira are a young, working class married couple - Dean currently working as a painter, and Cindy working as a nurse in a medical clinic - with a young daughter named Frankie. Despite their relatively tender ages, they are both ravaged by the life they've eked out together and by the experiences they've had leading into their marriage. Dean, a high school drop out, comes from a broken home, where he never really had a mother figure. He never saw himself getting married or having a family despite falling in love at first sight with Cindy. He doesn't have any professional ambition beyond his current work - which he enjoys since he feels he can knock off a beer at 8 o'clock in the morning without it affecting his work - although Cindy believes he has so much more potential in life. Cindy also comes from a dysfunctional family, with her own mother and father not setting an example of a harmonious married or family life. One of her previous serious relationships was with Bobby Ontario, that relationship which has a profound affect on many aspects of her marriage to Dean. Dean and Cindy head off on an overnight getaway together without Frankie, the getaway which may provide a clearer picture if their marriage can survive its many issues.
- 4
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Terry GilliamDP Roger PrattIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
James Cole, a prisoner of the state in the year 2035, can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth's population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. Returning to the year 1990, six years before the start of the plague, Cole is soon imprisoned in a psychiatric facility because his warnings sound like mad ravings. There he meets a scientist named Dr. Kathryn Railly and Jeffrey Goines, the mad son of an eminent virologist. Cole is returned by the authorities to the year 2035, and finally ends up at his intended destination in 1996. He kidnaps Dr. Railly in order to enlist her help in his quest. Cole discovers graffiti by an apparent animal rights group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, but as he delves into the mystery, he hears voices, loses his bearings, and doubts his own sanity. He must figure out if Goines, who seems to be a raving lunatic, holds the key to the puzzle.
- 5
Memento (2000)
Christopher NolanDP Wally PfisterIMDb 8.4TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
- 6
Manchester By The Sea (2016)
Kenneth LonerganDP Jody Lee LipesIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Lee Chandler is a brooding, irritable loner who works as a handyman for a Boston apartment block. One damp winter day he gets a call summoning him to his hometown, north of the city. His brother's heart has given out suddenly, and he's been named guardian to his 16-year-old nephew. As if losing his only sibling and doubts about raising a teenager weren't enough, his return to the past re-opens an unspeakable tragedy.
- 7
The Sea of Trees (2015)
Gus Van SantDP Kasper TuxenIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Arthur Brennan treks into Aokigahara, known as The Sea of Trees, a mysterious dense forest at the base of Japan's Mount Fuji where people go to commit suicide. On his journey to the suicide forest, he encounters Takumi Nakamura, a Japanese man who has lost his way after attempting suicide. The two men begin a journey of reflection and survival, which affirms Arthur's will to live and reconnects him to his love for his wife.
- 8
Amores Perros (2000)
Alejandro G. IñárrituDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
On the brink of the new Millennium in the bustling City of Mexico, one horrible car accident intertwines inextricably the lives of three perfect strangers. Octavio, a rebellious adolescent who is secretly in love with his sister-in-law, dreams of escaping his miserable life, and for this reason, he enters reluctantly the obscure world of dog fighting with his lethal dog Cofi. And then unexpectedly, Valeria, a stunning woman and famous supermodel, will cross paths with Octavio, while in the meantime, her pampered little dog Richie manages to vanish into thin air in the confined space of her apartment. Lastly, Chivo, an ex-guerrilla vagabond, after abandoning his little daughter, unable to make up for lost time, he channels his love to the city's strays and a mortally wounded Rottweiler. In the end, even though all the weary characters, men and beasts, wish for a bright future, in this life-changing journey in the pursuit of love, sometimes infidelity, sin and death can get in the way.
- 9
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin TarantinoDP Andrzej SekulaIMDb 8.8TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents.
- 10
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Pedro AlmodóvarDP José Luis AlcaineIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
In honor of his late wife who died in a flaming car accident, scientist, Dr. Robert Ledgard, is trying to synthesize the perfect skin which can withstand burns, cuts or any other kind of damage. As he gets closer to perfecting this skin on his flawless patient, the scientific community starts growing skeptical and his past is revealed that shows how his patient is closely linked to tragic events he would like to forget.
What nonlinear timeline films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a nonlinear timeline frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — beanie is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- beanie5.5×
- hoodie3.2×
- stubble3.0×
- t-shirt2.6×
- wall2.1×
- glasses1.9×
- skin1.6×
- car1.6×
How nonlinear timeline films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate nonlinear timeline from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The Irishman (2019) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,062 frames from 14 films carrying the nonlinear timeline label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/nonlinear-timeline
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