JOYOUS INVENTION: Junta Yamaguchi's BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES (dir by Junta Yamaguchi, 70mns, Japan, 2020)

Just when you thought the air might be going out of the balloon of cinema, a moviemaker like Japan's Junta Yamaguchi reminds you it's all about the idea.

Shot on smart phones, Sean Baker TANGERINE-style, BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES is a sci-fi comedy about a single cafe owner who discovers the desktop computer in his apartment above his cafe has somehow become able to show the future via the desktop computer downstairs in his cafe. . .two minutes from now.

When his Friends realize what's going on, they extend the loop by having the computers face each other. The entire movie takes place in one location with the characters shuttling upstairs and downstairs and struggling with whether this is a great gift or a pair of handcuffs robbing them of any free will decision.

A clever idea, two Apple desk top monitors, and an apartment building. . .

This is another of the great high concept-low budget sci-fi movies we've been seeing for the last 20 years or so. A genre that now includes amazing movies like 2004's time-travel PRIMER and 2013's alternate realities COHERENCE. 

The story is all focused minimalism almost to the point of absurdism. But it has to be so we can enjoy the micro plants and payoffs that start to multiply as the mirrored screens begin to create ripple pasts and ripple futures.

What Yamaguchi proves, like Sean Baker before him, is that cinema is really about ideas, performances, and execution-not big budgets.

When a group of moviemakers lay it all on the line with a microbudget movie like this, it's a kind of pure cinema. It's either going to work or not. Famous actors, amazing production value, well known pre-existing novels or comic books or whatever are not going to obscure whether the movie actually works or not. Either it does or it doesn't.

These Japanese poster originals are always so dope.

These very ambitious yet very resourceful low budget movies are in some way our future if cinema is going to thrive and have another renaissance. They're the training grounds so moviemakers can step by step, movie by movie, hone their craft and be ready for bigger and bigger canvases. 

They also force the moviemaker to succeed on pure talent and storytelling ability. 

BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES isn't for everyone. Some may find the very contained focused minimal comedic storyline not enough to even sustain this movie's very tight 70 minutes. 

But for those of us who are excited and nourished by wildly inventive moviemaking, every moment of this movie is a blast. And for the pop-culture saturated, you may recognize TWO MINUTES has echoes of the Twilight Zone 1960 episode "A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA" which could take photos 5 minutes into the future. 

Just like the two monitors creating a rip in the space time continuum, TWO MINUTES is mining the past to point a way forward to the future.

And we're all for it.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club