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Find Me in Paris

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Find Me in Paris  centers on Lena Grisky, a typical teenage girl attending the Paris Opera Ballet School, the most elite dance institution in the world. But Lena has a secret. She’s a time traveler, accidentally propelled from 1905 into the 21st century. Season 3 follows Lena, as she completes her final year at the Paris Opera Ballet School, and competes against the ballet world’s elite to nail a spot in Company while learning about her true identity as a Time Travel Heir.

S3 Episode 309 ‘Old Friends’

S3 episode 306 ‘trip down memory lane’, s3 episode 305 ‘the new girl’, s3 episode 304 ‘trouble in paradise’, s3 episode 303 ‘pair up’, s3 episode 302 ‘the future of dance’, s3 episode 301 ‘this is 1983’, no synopses found.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Find Me in Paris

A young ballet dancer from 1905 is transported into the 21st century with the power of a magical necklace. While her boyfriend looks for a way to bring her back, she must find a way to fit i... Read all A young ballet dancer from 1905 is transported into the 21st century with the power of a magical necklace. While her boyfriend looks for a way to bring her back, she must find a way to fit in and dodge the sinister time agents. A young ballet dancer from 1905 is transported into the 21st century with the power of a magical necklace. While her boyfriend looks for a way to bring her back, she must find a way to fit in and dodge the sinister time agents.

• Jill Girling
• Lori Mather-Welch
• Eubha Akilade
• Jessica Lord
• Castle Rock
• 36 User reviews
• 3 Critic reviews

Episodes 78

• Ines Lebreton

• Lena Grisky

• Henri Duquet

• Armando Castillo

• Thea Raphael …

• Max Alvarez

• Isaac Portier …

• Gabrielle Carré

• Claudine Renault …

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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User reviews 36

• Dec 28, 2018
• How many seasons does Find Me in Paris have? Powered by Alexa
• April 14, 2018 (France)
• فايند مي ان باريس
• Paris, France
• Cottonwood Media
• ZDF Enterprises
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 25 minutes

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Find me in paris, common sense media reviewers.

Talented cast, sweet story sell time-travel teen dramedy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

When Lena arrives in present day, she must adjust

Lena is smart, adaptable, determined, and speaks h

Some mild tension as Lena is pursued by other time

Romantic relationships among teens manifest in han

Parents need to know that Find Me in Paris is a teen dramedy about a ballerina named Lena (Jessica Lord) who travels through time from 1905 to the 21st century and must protect her secret until she finds a way back home. As with many fish-out-of-water stories, much of the show's humor comes at Lena's expense…

Positive Messages

When Lena arrives in present day, she must adjust to new social norms and expectations that don't make sense to her at first. With the help of a new friend, she learns how to fit in while remaining true to her own set of values. She also withstands pressure from other dancers who manipulate and bully to maintain their own status quo. The series also emphasizes the unifying nature of shared experiences like a love of dance.

Positive Role Models

Lena is smart, adaptable, determined, and speaks her mind when she's pushed into a corner. She values true friendship, resists other people's attempts to define and change her. Her dance rival, Thea, is the opposite, using her social status to control other people. Some characters are LGBTQ and are portrayed respectfully.

Violence & Scariness

Some mild tension as Lena is pursued by other time travelers who want to capture her.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Romantic relationships among teens manifest in hand-holding, hugs, and occasional kissing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Find Me in Paris is a teen dramedy about a ballerina named Lena (Jessica Lord) who travels through time from 1905 to the 21st century and must protect her secret until she finds a way back home. As with many fish-out-of-water stories, much of the show's humor comes at Lena's expense as she learns new social norms by immersion. She's also the victim of bullying and cyberbullying from a manipulative classmate who looks to keep her own social status by sabotaging Lena. Expect some teen romances that are mostly sweet but do include hugging and kissing. This international series also features a lot of really impressive dance sequences from the talented cast.

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (15)
• Kids say (14)

Based on 15 parent reviews

Sweet story, nothing edgy, great to watch with my daughter

Amazing family show, what's the story.

In FIND ME IN PARIS, Russian princess and prima ballerina Lena Grisky's (Jessica Lord) life takes an unexpected turn in 1905, when a gift from her boyfriend, Henri (Christy O'Donnell), sends her spinning through time and lands her in 2017 as a student in the Paris Opera Ballet School. Suddenly Lena's thrown into a battle of wills with the school's top dancer, Thea (Hannah Dodd), and she must blend into a world of cell phones and hip-hop dancing to protect her secret. As she learns on the fly all about being a teenager in the next century, Henri and his father work tirelessly to find her and bring her home before the nefarious Time Collectors do.

Is It Any Good?

Set against a beautiful Parisian backdrop, this teen drama series has international flair and a welcome wholesome feel. The kind of stereotypical teenage angst that's pervasive in many shows for this age group is mostly absent here, likely because of the naivety of a main character who arrives on the scene from a more prim and proper time. Lord's Lena is plenty appealing in her own right, but when she's juxtaposed with her conniving social nemesis, Thea, the latter's bullying ways make her (and her behavior) entirely unlikable. In contrast, Lena's instant friendship with Ines (Eubha Akilade) is a feel-good example of relationships that go right.

Find Me in Paris has even more to offer teens who love dance, as the performing arts are featured heavily in many scenes. From classical ballet to more contemporary choreography that Lena and her friends explore as part of an underground dance troupe, this aspect of the show is a quality addition rather than a clunky afterthought. And then there's the love story that spans the centuries as Lena and Henri struggle to reunite across barriers of time and the pressures of those who would keep them apart.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how series like Find Me in Paris present teen relationships. What examples have you seen of positive friendship and romance among teens? To what degree is sex a pressure in them? How does this compare to your own experiences and those of your peers?

How do our time and surroundings define us and our experiences? When have you been in a position to feel like an outsider? If it's a familiar feeling for you, how do you help make others feel welcome when you are able? What can we learn from sharing our differences and relating on the interests and values we do share?

What examples of courage , determination, and other positive character strengths do you see in this show? What accounts for Lena's ability to adapt to her new surroundings? Do you think you would do so as successfully as she does?

• Premiere date : August 1, 2018
• Cast : Jessica Lord
• Network : Hulu
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Arts and Dance , Great Girl Role Models
• Character Strengths : Courage
• TV rating : TV-PG
• Last updated : March 1, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Hulu Acquires Teen Ballerina Series ‘Find Me in Paris’ For U.S. Streaming

Originally Published by:

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PARIS – Hulu has acquired U.S. streaming rights to Find Me in Paris , the time-traveling ballerina series produced by French banner Cottonwood Media with German broadcaster ZDF and ZDF Enterprises.

The half-hour teenage series has already been acquired by France Télévisions in France, Disney in France and Italy, ZDF in Germany, ABC in Australia, and VRT in Belgium.

Created by Jill Girling and Lori Mather-Welch, the duo behind Nickelodeon’s hit series Ride ,  Find Me in Paris is set against the backdrop of the Garnier Opera House in Paris and centers on Lena Grisky, a young dancer and princess poised to become the next young star of the ballet world in 1905.

The show is produced by industry veterans David Michel, Zoé Carrera Allaix, Cecile Lauritano, and Pascal Breton, along with line producer Leila Smith. Cottonwood Media’s sister company Federation Kids & Family and ZDF Enterprises are co-repping the series in international markets.

Michel, Cottonwood Media’s president, said the company was “confident that Find Me in Paris  will be a part of Hulu’s explosive growth in the SVOD industry, while also finding the perfect place to connect with and inspire American kids.”

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Hulu Nabs U.S. Streaming Rights to Teenage Ballerina Series ‘Find Me in Paris’

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PARIS – Hulu has acquired U.S. streaming rights to “Find Me in Paris,” the time-traveling ballerina series produced by French banner Cottonwood Media with German broadcaster ZDF and ZDF Enterprises.

The half-hour teenage series has already been acquired by France Télévisions in France, Disney in France and Italy, ZDF in Germany, ABC in Australia, and VRT in Belgium.

Created by Jill Girling and Lori Mather-Welch, the duo behind Nickelodeon’s hit series “Ride,” “Find Me in Paris” is set against the backdrop of the Garnier Opera House in Paris and centers on Lena Grisky, a young dancer and princess poised to become the next young star of the ballet world in 1905.

The show is produced by industry veterans David Michel, Zoé Carrera Allaix, Cecile Lauritano, and Pascal Breton, along with line producer Leila Smith. Cottonwood Media’s sister company Federation Kids & Family and ZDF Enterprises are co-repping the series in international markets.

Michel, Cottonwood Media’s president, said the company was “confident that ‘Find Me in Paris’ will be a part of Hulu’s explosive growth in the SVOD industry, while also finding the perfect place to connect with and inspire American kids.”

Arne Lohmann, VP ZDFE.junior at ZDF Enterprises, said the banner had been “successful with teenage live-action series and with dance- and ballet-related productions, such as ‘Dance Academy,’ on international VoD services.”

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The Greatest Hits Is a High-Concept Remix of Romantic Clichés

Time travel is metaphor for grief — and music is the key to unlocking it — in this lo-fi romantic drama.

Grief is never convenient . It can manifest at the least opportune moments, and can be triggered by the most innocuous things. Whether it be a scent or a song, memory has a way of latching on, bringing up moments that we’d rather suppress.

Harriet (Lucy Boynton) understands that plight better than anyone. It’s been two years since her boyfriend Max ( David Corenswet ) had a fatal car accident — and thanks to some head trauma she sustained in the crash, she often finds herself reliving moments of their relationship, over and over, incapable of moving on.

Unfortunately, that’s not a metaphor: these flashbacks are visceral and real, each triggered by a song she experienced with Max. One takes her back to their meet-cute at a music festival; another transports her to a blissful beach day. On paper, it’s kind of romantic. But in Harriet’s story, orchestrated by writer-director Ned Benson, it’s painfully inconvenient.

The Greatest Hits is not afraid to indulge in some soul-stirring melodrama. It coasts the highs and lows of lost love with its heart on its sleeve, making for a story with an intimate scope. But believe it or not, it’s the sci-fi elements that give this story the grounding realism that it needs. As in a handful of cerebral sci-fi dramas , time travel is a fitting metaphor for grief. It’s also the very thing that keeps his sophomore effort from sinking beneath the weight of its played-out romantic clichés.

Harriet has traced the breadth of her life with Max by the songs they first listened to together, but there’s one moment in her life, one song, that remains unaccounted for. Harriet is still searching for the tune that will help her change the past, potentially saving Max’s life. But she can’t spend all her time combing through their record collection. Sooner or later, she has to rejoin the real world — and with the help of ever-present noise-canceling headphones, she can commute to her job at the library (because it’s quiet, of course) or her group therapy sessions without triggering another flashback.

From the outset, it’s very clear that Harriet is not living. Her condition has turned her from a promising music producer to a hermit, and the apartment she once shared with Max has become a shrine fit for a stalker. Among a careful catalog of songs she’s marked “safe” — from crates upon crates of her record collection — hangs a relationship timeline defined by music. She’s pushed everyone out of her life, her own mother included. The only one that’s stuck around is her gay best friend Morris (Austin Crute), who conveniently pops up whenever Harriet needs a confidence boost.

Boynton delivers an understated, aching performance as Harriet.

Crute’s performance is a definitive highlight, especially when paired with Boynton’s sullen, skittish lead. His effortless charm serves as an indicator of the kind of person Harriet used to be, and the film gains some much-needed levity whenever he’s around. Still, his limited role is one of many frustrating examples of an underbaked plot.

The Greatest Hits might be more enamored with its time-trekking premise than it is with the characters affected by it. That’s especially evident in the bond between Harriet and Max — or more appropriately, Max’s memory. Each flash back to a moment in their relationship is tinged with dread, which definitely works, given the circumstances. But we don’t learn much about Max during these brief exchanges; that’s partially because Harriet is so determined to change his fate. Otherwise, it’s conversations between Harriet and Morris that explain just who Max was when he was alive.

That instinct pushes the character into another vexing sci-fi trope: that of the Dead Wife in a Flashback. It’s interesting to see the gender roles reversed here, especially given Corenswet’s shifting role in the zeitgeist. ( He’s about to be Superman! ) Still, it would have been nice to see him get the chance to embody an actual character, rather than a ghost holding Harriet back.

Harriet’s quest to save her late boyfriend is the crux of the conflict here, but it never gets the substance it deserves.

Things get more interesting with the introduction of David (Justin H. Min), the latest member of Harriet’s support group. He’s grieving the loss of parents, but he clicks with Harriet instantly. With him, our heroine forges new memories attached to familiar tunes (the most endearing being an impromptu jam session to Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird”), and slowly opens herself up to the idea of love. But intimacy is hard when you can’t leave the house without covering your ears. The closer Harriet gets to David, the more the lines between past and future blur. It’s here that The Greatest Hits shifts into a more urgent clip, settling finally into a story you don’t want to look away from.

Min’s chemistry with Boynton carries The Greatest Hits through some of its sillier sci-fi beats, including a confrontation that forces Harriet to prove that she can, in fact, meddle with time. The promise of new love — and the threat of more loss — injects their relationship with real, aching stakes. Any student of romance and sci-fi will likely know how this could end. Benson’s high-concept love story might be unique, but it’s not reinventing the wheel. That’s as much a virtue as it can be a vice, as The Greatest Hits is sampling the classics whenever it can. Nostalgia and novelty live side-by-side here, and it’s that fusion that ultimately delivers a solid exercise in rebirth.

The Greatest Hits is streaming now on Hulu.

• Science Fiction

The Sci-Fi Time Travel Series Everyone Is Binging On Hulu

Time travel is one of the most popular storytelling devices in the modern age of filmmaking. Back to the Future , Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , Avengers: Endgame, and even a little movie called Looper  all found enormous success over the years, by shifting protagonists backwards or forwards in time. But in some cases, it's not the hero who travels in time, but someone else: for instance, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) didn't travel to the future in The Terminator , but instead, the future came to her — in the form of an Arnold Scharzenegger-shaped robot meant to kill her.

There's a similar narrative thread running through a certain  Seth Rogen -produced show on Hulu — which is right now gaining a lot of eyes — and that's  Future Man . The series combines elements of The Terminator with another, lesser known eighties classic,  The Last Starfighter,  crafting a story that involves a gamer whose high score qualifies him to become a fighter pilot in an intergalactic future war.

Yes, you read that right: In Future Man,  that gamer — Josh Futterman, played by Josh Hutcherson, from The Hunger Games –  beats the seemingly unbeatable game Biotic Wars, only to discover that the game is based on a very real, dystopian future that he must now save in real life.

A cast worth traveling in time (with terrible results) for

Future Man has a pretty great pedigree behind it. In addition to Seth Rogen executive producing and guest starring, as well as Josh Hutcherson leading, there is a ton of fantastic talent involved. Most notably, the first season surrounds the poor life choices of a scientist named Doctor Elias Kronish, played by none other than legendary sci-fi and voice actor Keith David ( They Live , Gargoyles ). Meanwhile, the actors playing Josh's parents are none other than Ed Begley Jr. ( The Accidental Tourist, Best in Show ) and the late, great Glenne Headly (who famously out hustles the hustlers in the Frank Oz classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) .

Without giving too much of the story away, Future Man cribs from more than just The Terminator and The Last Starfighter . Very notably, it also borrows from Back to the Future, what with our heroes traveling backwards in time, even making some direct references to the Michael J. Fox classic. Of course, in this case, they attempt to repair a mistake which will inevitably cause the end of the world with hilarious (and terrible) results.

Future Man  wrapped up its run of three seasons on Hulu in 2020. It is a half-hour comedy, making it very easy to binge-watch. So if you're looking for the sort of time hijinks story Seth Rogen would make, well, Future Man is probably the show for you.

In sci-fi series 'Kindred,' a modern-day Black woman is transported to an 1800s plantation

FX’s “Kindred,” which begins streaming Tuesday on Hulu, plunges viewers into a mystery that exists to be experienced, not solved. A young Black woman named Dana, later revealed as an aspiring TV writer in modern-day Los Angeles, lies dazed and apparently injured on the floor of her new house. Barely able to move, she grabs a bag and gathers clothes, a kitchen knife and a bottle of aspirin. She eases into a tub of water, which turns red from her wounds. Then the police start banging on her door, demanding to know whether anything is wrong.

What exactly is happening? There’s no long wait for an answer. Like the 1979 novel by Octavia E. Butler that inspired it, the new series quickly reveals that Dana somehow is time-traveling back to an early-1800s Maryland plantation, the place where her ancestors lived with the horrific reality of slavery. While the eight episodes (which arrive all at once) make some changes to the book’s narrative, the show’s creator, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, says his dream scenario would be for people to watch them in tandem with reading Butler’s print version.

“The book will always be the book, and Octavia, thank God, her work will always be there. I just wanted to celebrate her,” says the noted playwright and Obie award winner, who previously worked on HBO’s “Watchmen.”

“That’s what got me through the hardest days, thinking Octavia, Octavia, Octavia.”

“Kindred” is the latest FX show to screen exclusively on Hulu, a partnership that has resulted in the acclaimed “Reservation Dogs,” a comedy-drama about young Native Americans, and “The Bear,” which made the phrase “Yes, chef!” go viral with its intense, quirky portrayal of the staff of a Chicago Italian sandwich spot.

Like those critical hits,  Jacobs-Jenkins’ adaptation has the potential for big pop-culture impact, particularly since Butler’s writings have become a hot source for film and TV projects. “Kindred” is the first to be completed of several screen projects drawn from the author's works. They include a post-apocalyptic saga based on “Dawn” from Ava DuVernay’s production company,  a romance involving immortals spun from “Wild Seed” from Viola Davis’ Juvee Productions and a vampire tale from “Fledging” that’s being executive-produced by Issa Rae and J.J. Abrams.

 An icon in the science fiction genre, Butler is now considered one of the most notable writers of the 20 th century.  She spent years in obscurity, writing in the small hours of the morning and supporting herself with routine jobs during the day. “Kindred” was considered her breakthrough novel. In addition to winning several major sci-fi awards, Butler received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 1995. She was the first sci-fi author so honored.

Since Butler’s death in 2006 at age 58, interest in her short stories and novels has continued to grow as readers keep discovering the relevance of the themes that she addressed: climate change, racial injustice, economic and social inequality among them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her 1993 novel “The Parable of the Sower” reached the New York Times best-seller list, offering what Slate called in 2020 “a blueprint for adjusting to uncertainty.”

“I think if there is a resurgence of interest for her today, it’s because what really defines her is her prescience. She was a visionary, the way that she understands the issues to come. ... When you think of the ‘Parable of the Sower,’ her book on climate change, the story takes place in 2024, so we’re almost there. It’s where everything collapses,” says Benedicte Boisseron, a professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan who participated in a panel discussion on Butler’s enduring influence in March 2022 during an Octavia Butler Week at the Ann Arbor campus.

Jacobs-Jenkins, who discovered Butler’s books as a young teen, says “Kindred” always has stayed with him. When he returned to the book in 2010 as an adult, “I finished reading it and thought this is a television show.” The project was sold to FX in 2016 and stayed in development for about five years. The pilot finally was shot in fall 2021, and filming for the entire series took place for about six months in 2022, with rural Georgia subbing for Maryland.

More: Detroit native Robert McTyre Jr. was fired from LAX, lived in his car before job on 'Nope'

More: 'Who Killed Vincent Chin?' documentary lands on prestigious National Film Registry list

Despite the time-travel element of “Kindred,” it recounts what daily life was like for enslaved men and women in the antebellum South with the painful accuracy of a real memoir. Butler did extensive research for the novel, traveling by bus from California to Maryland and visiting historical sites like Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, which in the 1970s barely addressed the existence of slavery

“There wasn’t the internet, there wasn’t Google, there wasn’t really even, like, library shelves full of scholarship. She was really kind of trying to save something from oblivion, maybe,” Jacobs-Jenkins says. “For me, it’s a great irony of the book that it remains feeling so present tense because I think it just indicates how resistant the culture is to really processing the meaningfulness of this history.”

Jacobs-Jenkins read Butler’s papers and reflected on the differences between 1979 and today before choosing the departures that the series makes from the book. For instance, Dana’s time travel is changed to a generational phenomenon that was shared by certain relatives, a twist that he says was inspired by Butler's early drafts.

Also, the  character of Kevin (Dana’s white husband in the book) becomes a new love interest here who finds himself being taken along on this impossible, potentially lethal journey with a woman he barely knows. ”I just wanted to see if there was a way to build that relationship convincingly in real time," says Jacobs-Jenkins.

There also is a nod to the contemporary "Karen" meme of white privilege with the addition of a neighbor who's nosy to an intrusive level about what’s occurring at Dana’s house.

“For me, the best adaptations aren’t necessarily about translating something beat by beat, word for word, but trying to re-create in some ways what the original artist was attempting to create in their own context,” says Jacobs-Jenkins.

An Obie award winner who, like Butler, was himself a MacArthur “genius” fellow, Jacobs-Jenkins also took on the task of being the showrunner for “Kindred.” It was his first brush with being the person essentially in charge of guiding an entire series.

“The experience of going from a writer to a showrunner is like going from a beggar to a CEO overnight,” he says with a laugh. “I spent six years trying to prove to people the idea had something in it and suddenly you’re handed the keys to a thousand Mercedes.”

Despite challenges like having to shoot under COVID-19 safety precautions, Jacobs-Jenkins says he enjoyed the process, especially working with the actors. ”There were definitely a ton of difficulties, but I just felt that every day was a blessing.”

For the role of Dana, who is on-screen for most of the scenes in the series, the production found a future star in  newcomer Mallori Johnson, who was in her fourth year of studying acting at Juilliard when she auditioned for the part.  Micah Stock, her co-star as Kevin, describes her as an “astonishingly skilled actor” for someone just out of college.  “There were times on set where those of us who were a little bit older would look at her and say, 'I can’t do that.'”

Stock, one of several cast members from the New York theater scene, says he already was a friend and longtime fan of Jacobs-Jenkins when he got the "Kindred" script from his representatives. “I think at some point in the process I wrote Branden and said, ‘I just want you to know I really want to do this,’” he says.

Although “Kindred” is more than 40 years old, it's reaching small screens at a time when a debate is raging about how U.S. history and topics related to race are being taught in public schools. Stock thinks the series, like the book, will encourage dialogue.

"The show will spark these conversations, I’m sure, and there’ll be lots of discourse around these things. And ultimately, that’s the win, right? It's the conversation.”

For a nation to have any true sense of reconciliation, facing the past as honestly as “Kindred” does is a necessary step. “It’s very important that people understand (that) to reckon with your history, you have to reckon with … the past of slavery,” says U-M's Boisseron.

She's glad that the book studied at universities has become a potential binge watch. “It opens Octavia Butler to a whole new audience,” she says.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [email protected].

All eight episodes arrive Tuesday on Hulu

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11 of the best time travel movies to watch on streaming

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Thirty years after their last time travel adventure, Bill and Ted are back in their most excellent journey yet. Bill and Ted Face the Music , starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in their iconic slacker-metalhead roles, is out in theaters and on VOD now.

As a genre, time-travel movies can encompass a lot of different styles. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a silly, fluffy time-jumping adventure, which stands in stark juxtaposition to the hard sci-fi 12 Monkeys or the melancholy, contemplative About Time . What they all have in common is time travel as a major plot point, whether the creators do their best to explain the science or just kind of hand wave. (A time travel movie is different from a time loop movie, though, which is why you won’t find Groundhog Day , Happy Death Day , or Palm Springs — all excellent films — on this list.)

Below, we’ve rounded up 11 of our favorite time travel narratives you can watch on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max right now. Party on, dudes.

If you can stomach a narrative about a viral pandemic knocking out most of humanity, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys is a compelling adaptation of Chris Marker’s legendary short film, La Jetée (which you can stream on Criterion Channel ). The feature remake is mostly notable for its incredible performances — Bruce Willis! Christopher Plummer! An Oscar nomination for Brad Pitt! Willis stars as James Cole, one of the pandemic’s survivors, who’s sent back to 1996 to track down the origins of virus. He overshoots and ends up in 1990, where he’s involuntarily committed to a mental institution. Pitt plays his fellow inmate who, Cole discovers back in the future, may or may not be responsible for the virus.

As far as time travel movies go, 12 Monkeys is firmly in the grim, twist-y, hard sci-fi camp. If that’s your thing, it’s an excellent watch.

12 Monkeys is streaming on HBO Max .

All of the marketing around About Time made it seem like a fun, fluffy rom-com in which Domhnall Gleeson uses his magical time traveling abilities to woo Rachel McAdams. But master of the British rom-com, Richard Curtis ( Love Actually , Bridget Jones’ Diary , Knotting Hill , Four Weddings and a Funeral ), makes About Time a lot deeper. I won’t spoil the twist that throws a wrench into the time travel mechanics, but I’ll just say that it’s more about the anxieties of parenthood than getting a fairy tale ending.

About Time is streaming on Netflix .

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame satisfyingly wraps up its core characters arcs and made room for the next chapter while also balancing humor, emotional weight, and huge choreographed set pieces. It also features a surprisingly well executed time travel storyline! If you haven’t seen this one since last summer, dive back into its mind-bending middle act.

Avengers: Endgame is streaming on Disney Plus .

Back to the Future trilogy

The story of Marty McFly’s (Michael J. Fox) travels through time in a souped-up DeLorean, aided by his friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), is a classic for good reason. The first movie, in which Marty has to make sure his parents fall in love lest he be erased from existence, is always a hit, but it’s especially fun to revisit Back to the Future Part II just to see what people in 1989 thought 2015 would look like.

Back to the Future , Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III are streaming on Netflix .

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was one of those movies that, if you grew up in the ’90s or early 2000s, you’d catch in bits and pieces because it aired constantly on cable. The format was perfect for that kind of disjointed viewing, since it mostly consists of silly scenes in which Bill and Ted get into historical hijinks strung together to form a tiny thread of narrative. But what Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure lacks in plot, it makes up for in heart. The core ethos of Bill and Ted is “Be excellent to each other,” a philosophy that the boys consistently embody. It’s just nice, okay ?

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is streaming on Starz .

Hot Tub Time Machine

If you’re the type of person who hears a title like Hot Tub Time Machine and thinks, “Ugh, that sounds stupid,” Hot Tub Time Machine is probably not for you. But if you’re the type of person who hears a title like Hot Tub Time Machine and thinks, “Hell yeah, that sounds stupid,” you’re gonna have a good time.

Hot Tub Time Machine is streaming on Hulu with Live TV .

If you only know Rian Johnson from Star Wars: The Last Jedi and/or Knives Out , it’s worth going back through his filmography before he helmed one of the biggest franchises in the world. Looper , his last film before The Last Jedi, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as two different versions of the same man, a time-traveling assassin, known as a “looper,” named Joe. It’s both a compelling time travel narrative and a slick action movie with neat visual effects. In the wise words of Elijah Wood, long live Rian Johnson .

Looper is streaming on FuboTV .

Safety Not Guaranteed

Before he helmed the Jurassic World franchise, gave us the fascinating flop that is The Book of Henry , and was booted from Star Wars: Episode 9, Colin Trevorrow directed Safety Not Guaranteed. The indie comedy stars Mark Duplass as Kenneth, a paranoid, lonely guy who places a classified ad looking for a partner to join him on a time travel mission. He finds that partner in Darius (Aubrey Plaza) who, unbeknownst to him, is a newspaper intern working on a story about him. Duplass excels at playing these kind of weirdos who live on the border between sad and creepy, and it’s an energy that works well with Plaza’s disaffected schtick. Whether or not Kenneth actually built a working time machine is simultaneously the key to the story and also not really the point, and Trevorrow leaves us hanging until the very end.

Safety Not Guaranteed is streaming on Netflix .

Years before directing his breakout English-language feature Colossal with Anne Hathaway, Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo made this thriller about a man who uses a short-span time travel device to discover the identity of a masked attacker. Small-scale and twisty, Timecrimes revels in disorientation and has the dark comedic edge that has come to devine Vigalondo’s films. A whodunnit for the seasoned time-travel movie-watcher.

Timecrimes is streaming for free on Tubi TV with ads.

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Disney is offering a bundle combining its three streaming services — Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus — for $12.99/month.

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Time-Traveling Ballerina Gets a TV Series

Mar 23, 2016  •  Post A Comment

A young ballerina who has her share of secrets is the focus of a drama series that’s in the works for youth-focused outlets worldwide from Cottonwood Media, based in Los Angeles and Paris, and German public broadcaster ZDF Enterprises. Variety reports that the weekly teen drama “Paris Opera” marks the partners’ first live-action co-production.

“A half-hour young adult drama, ‘Paris Opera’ centers on Lena Grisky, a young ballet dancer trying to navigate the perils of adolescence in 2015 as she is poised to become the next international prima ballerina at the Paris Opera. The fact she’s a time traveler from 1905 and Princess Helena Grisky of Russia makes things just a little bit more interesting,” Variety reports.

The project has been greenlighted for production by ZDF. It’s created by Canadians Jill Girling and Lori Matter Welch, who were also behind Nickelodeon’s “Let It Ride” and who will be showrunners on “Paris Opera.”

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The Best Time Travel Movies Streaming on Hulu

Can your flux capacitor even handle the best time travel movies streaming on Hulu? These time travel films explore what would happen if we had the ability to transport ourselves to another time and dimension. Is altering the past worth risking the future? Or is it safer to let fate decide?

One recent time travel movie that audiences loved was Max Barbakow's Palm Springs . Starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti, it's an updated take on the Groundhog Day phenomenon that perfectly meshes comedy and drama with a touch of romance too. There's also Boss Level , another time loop movie about a man repeating the day he was murdered in order to unlock the mystery behind his demise.

Vote up the best time travel movies streaming on Hulu, and be sure to let us know what you think in the comment section.

Palm Springs

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The Sci-Fi Mind-Bender On Hulu Is The Most Original Time Travel Movie In Years

Posted: February 16, 2024 | Last updated: February 16, 2024

For sci-fi fans, there’s something ironic about time travel movies: after you watch enough of them, you may feel caught in your own time loop because all of the films feel more or less the same. That’s why it’s always special to discover such a movie that feels fresh and original, and if you’ve been on the lookout for a time travel movie that feels completely innovative, you’re in luck. Aporia is now streaming on Hulu, and its fresh take on someone turning back the clock is one that will keep you riveted from beginning to end.

Time Travel, As Always, Yields Mixed Results

What is Aporia about, exactly? Without giving too many of its twists and turns away, this is a movie about a woman grieving the death of her husband. He was killed by a drunk driver, but through the magic of time travel, she has the opportunity to save his life–a noble intention that, as you might expect, unleashes some seriously unintended consequences for herself and many others.

Trading One Life For Another

What makes Aporia’s take on time travel feel so fresh, though? Unlike most other science fiction films where characters attempt to alter the past, the grieving widow is unable to personally transport herself back through the veil of years. Instead, she has the opportunity to send a subatomic particle backwards to a specific point in time, and if that particle should appear inside somebody, they will instantly die.

For all intents and purposes, this gives her an opportunity to send a sci-fi bullet into the past and kill the man who killed her husband before he drunkenly steps behind the wheel. That automatically makes Aporia much darker than your typical time travel movie, but by the time she’s ready to pull the trigger, it’s hard not to sympathize with her actions. Once we see that the drunk driver both feels no remorse and experiences no major legal consequences for his fatally negligent actions, it’s clear that zapping him out of the timestream may be the closest thing the widow gets to seeing justice.

Familiar Faces To Sci-Fi Fans

We keep comparing Aporia to other sci-fi movies, and if you’re a fan of the genre, you’re definitely going to love the cast. The widow is played by Judy Greer, someone known for appearing in sci-fi blockbusters like Ant-Man, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (voice only), and many more. The dead husband she hopes to save is played by Edi Gathegi, someone known for appearing in killer sci-fi show For All Mankind, played the mutant Darwin in X-Men: First Class, and who will appear next year in Superman: Legacy, James Gunn’s inaugural film meant to kick off the new DCU.

A Critical Darling

In case you were wondering, we’re not the only ones who instantly fell in love with Aporia. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently has a critical rating of 89 percent, a score which is that much more impressive when you consider how critics often can’t wrap their minds around science fiction. In this case, critics specifically praised Aporia for effortlessly blending its hard sci-fi premise with understandably human motivations and almost heartbreakingly emotional performances.

See For Yourself How Original Aporia Is

Once you experience Aporia, the only downside is that you’ll wish you could travel back in time and watch it again for the very first time. It’s currently available to stream on Hulu, and we’re confident that once you stream it, this film will blow you away. On the off chance that it doesn’t, however, we’re going to need you to promise not to blow us away with a subatomic particle…at least, not until we’ve watched Madame Web and are finally ready to die before the next crappy Sony superhero movie is announced.

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Hulu/YouTube

Hulu doc ‘Ballet Now’ shows off wondrous dancing—but little else

Broadway star tiler peck leads the elisabeth moss-produced film..

Chris Osterndorf

Posted on Jul 20, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 10:34 am CDT

Ballet has always been fundamentally cinematic. The synthesis of movement and music has provided the inspiration for classic films from The Red Shoes to The Turning Point . Following the success of Black Swan in 2010, Hollywood should, in theory, have been ready to capitalize on renewed interest in the art form. But other than the 2011 Wim Wenders documentary Pina and a couple of canceled TV shows (Amy Sherman-Palladino’s dramedy Bunheads , the disappointing Starz series Flesh and Bone ), ballet has remained a pretty specialized subject.

The new Hulu documentary Ballet Now attempts to break down some of that specialization and generate curiosity in ballet, if not in ballet movies, for a new generation. The film centers on the event of the same name from 2017, in which principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, Tiler Peck , curated a program showcasing elements of modern ballet alongside other styles of dance. In addition to Peck and other ballet professionals, the show featured acclaimed tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, noted film actor and experienced clown Bill Irwin , and hip-hop performer and teacher Virgil “Lil O” Gadson, who rose to fame on TV’s So You Think You Can Dance .

Ballet Now was produced by Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss (who also briefly appears in the film), and while Hulu is clearly trying to keep its talent in the family, it’s not quite up to par with some of its recent docs. While the streaming platform’s output in this space has been comparatively small, paltry even compared to Netflix, it’s had luck with showbusiness profiles like Too Funny to Fail: The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show , and Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine . Ballet Now , as all-encompassing as the title promises it to be, is actually very slight. At a scant 73 minutes, it has trouble justifying its existence, much less making any profound conclusions about the state of contemporary ballet.

But if you’re already interested in dance the film is likely to more than hold your attention. The majority of Ballet Now ’s runtime is spent following Peck in the lead-up to the event’s premiere, before showing us the ultimate result. Some of the footage of the dancers is mesmerizing. The physical and mental lengths these performers go to, the strain they put on their bodies and minds, will never cease to be astounding. For all the assumptions out there about how ballet is “girly” or “delicate,” the sheer power and athleticism on display here are enough to boggle the mind.

In one memorable exchange, Peck’s mother comments on how she must be hungry because she never eats her whole turkey sandwich. Peck’s eyes shoot back daggers, communicating in a single glance the extent to which every dancer goes to in order to remain in peak form.

Peck’s presence in the dance community is the other interesting element of Ballet Now . Surprising as it may seem to outsiders, ballet is still a very male-dominated field in terms of who holds all the power, and Peck says as much in the film. To wit, the ballet world has had its own Me Too moment recently, casting the lascivious male dancers in films like Black Swan in a much harsher light. Given the state of her artistic community, for Peck to be so young (she’s 29) and curating a show so big is nothing short of a monumental coup.

Peck also states in the film that she hopes the show will inspire a generation of new dancers to take up ballet. In a touching scene, she talks to an aspiring ballerina who names her Barbie (the subject of another Hulu documentary ) after her. Here, we return to the problem of the film itself: It’s too short on details for us to care about that little girl. Director Steven Cantor captures some very good moments and uses some clever editing to build tension during several montages. But in the end, Ballet Now feels more like a DVD extra to accompany the original live performance than a feature film capable of standing on its own. If Peck wants to inspire people, she’s likely to have to do it onstage.

But if one little girl (or boy) does watch Ballet Now and becomes inspired to help bring the tradition of the ballet into a new era, it will all have been worth it.

Still not sure what to watch on Hulu ? Here are the best movies on Hulu , what’s new , the best shows on Hulu , the sexiest movies you can stream on the service, Hulu documentaries , anime , and the must-see Hulu originals .

Here are the best thrillers and action movies to get your heart racing, classic movies when you want a blast from the past, sad movies when you need a good cry, and funny movies on Hulu when you need a good laugh.

Chris Osterndorf is an entertainment reporter and movie critic based in Los Angeles. He holds a degree in cinema from Chicago’s DePaul University. His work has appeared on the Daily Dot, Mic, the Script Lab, Salon, the Week, xoJane, and more.

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Kindred Review: Hulu Historical Drama Doesn't Live Up to Its Fantastic Time Travel Premise

The series commits to Octavia Butler's themes but can't find momentum

Mallori Johnson, Kindred

Adapting Octavia Butler's classic 1979 novel Kindred is a daunting task, made all the more daunting by being the first to bring Butler's work to the screen, big or small. Butler was a groundbreaking science fiction writer whose work explores themes of Black identity, history, and power relationships. Her readership has expanded and her reputation has only grown since her death in 2006 at the age of 58. But while a handful of Butler books are in various stages of development, including Wild Seed and Parable of the Sower , FX's Kindred is the first to make it to the finish line. 

The series, premiering Dec. 13 on Hulu, both expands the world of the novel and stays true to its central concerns, specifically the way American history has papered over the reality of slavery while romanticizing the pre-Civil War South and the ways in which slavery's legacy remains never far from the surface of the present. Acclaimed playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins serves as showrunner, and his Kindred remains admirably true to the spirit of Butler's work. But, based on this eight-episode first season, the series struggles to translate that respectful approach into a consistently compelling ongoing series. After a promising start, Kindred never establishes any sense of momentum or urgency, in spite of a vivid, ugly depiction of plantation life and the best efforts of a strong cast.

But the start is promising. After an ominous bit of scene setting, the pilot (directed by Janicza Bravo ) begins in 2016, following Dana ( Mallori Johnson ), an aspiring TV writer newly arrived in Los Angeles who spends her evenings outlining old episodes of Dynasty to learn the craft. But Dana's arrival comes as a surprise to her aunt Denise ( Eisa Davis ) — her only surviving relative — and Denise's husband, Alan ( Charles Parnell ), who are surprised, and less than thrilled, that she's moved there with the money from selling her grandmother's New York home. The only upside to the awkward dinner in which she tells them of the move: Dana meets Kevin ( Micah Stock ), an awkward but endearing musician/waiter whom she begins dating (after at first keeping him at arm's length).

• The commitment to Octavia Butler's themes
• Strong performances from a pair of relative newcomers in the leads
• After a promising start the series starts to drag

It's a relationship that will face some challenges from the start, both unsurprising and otherwise. On the unsurprising front: some nosy neighbors who, though they won't say it (or maybe even admit it to themselves), aren't sure about having a Black neighbor, maybe especially one with a white boyfriend. Less expected: Dana begins blacking out, disappearing, and traveling through time, returning again and again to a plantation in 1815 Maryland, seemingly drawn there whenever Rufus ( David Alexander Kaplan ), the son of plantation owner Thomas Weylin ( Ryan Kwanten ) and his wife Margaret ( Gayle Rankin ), is in a state of danger and distress. Further complicating matters is another unexpected discovery: Olivia ( Sheria Irving ), the mother Dana previously believed died in a car accident when Dana was 2, is there as well.

Dana, later joined by Kevin, continues to jump back and forth in time, but the series mostly settles into its plantation setting, where the couple struggles to come up with a cover story for their identities (and their odd manner of clothing) and with how best to proceed. Deducing that Rufus is part of her family tree, Dana feels she has to keep him alive but struggles with what to do beyond this. He seems destined to inherit his father's monstrous racism, but perhaps, she reckons, her influence can temper that.

Meanwhile, Kevin both fears for his life and discovers his white privilege extends to the past, despite posing as a penniless traveling musician. Some of the series' best moments come when Kevin finds himself face-to-face with the dehumanizing abuses of slavery, which shock him even more than they do Dana. "You're not seeing what I see everyday," she tells her boyfriend. "I know that," he replies, only to receive a fully warranted "Do you?" in return. Any echoes of the contrast between the day-to-day 21st century realities experienced by white people and those experienced by everyone else are surely not coincidental.

Micah Stock and Mallori Johnson,  Kindred

Stout and Johnson develop playful chemistry as their relationship becomes a kind of refuge from the horrors of slavery, but Kindred often gets bogged down in a narrative that only inches forward in each episode. It also never quite cracks the catch-22 that comes with depicting slave owners. Humanizing Thomas and Margaret too much risks inviting sympathy for the devil. Depicting them as irredeemably awful risks making them stock villains. Kindred mostly chooses the second route, especially with Thomas, which makes the character seem appropriately threatening but also a bit flat and familiar.

Kindred 's first season is thematically rich but narratively sluggish. Yet, like the soap operas Dana adores, it ends on a cliffhanger that makes it hard not to wonder what happens next, and there's enough promise in these episodes to hope the story doesn't end here. 

Premieres: All episodes premiere Tuesday, Dec. 13 on Hulu Who's in it: Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten Who's behind it: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins serves as showrunner, working form the novel by Octavia Butler For fans of: Butler, stories of time travel, science fiction with social themes How many episodes we watched: Eight of eight

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