The Timekeepers of Eternity (2021, Aristotelis Maragkos)

Perfect example of a whim of an experimental concept getting painstakingly taken all the way, the arthouse festival-film equivalent of those people who create live-action remake videos of Mario Kart games. In Stephen King’s The Langoliers, the villain’s extreme “idle hands” anxiety has him constantly tearing paper, so Maragkos has printed the 3-hour TV version onto copy paper and ripped and torn it into an hour-long edit.

Cool concept, but the problem with your source material being a 1990’s TV movie is that your experimental film feels a lot like a 1990’s TV movie, which is quite bad, especially when the never-idle Bronson Pinchot is onscreen. Billy Crystal’s wife in City Slickers is top billed, for some reason. Dean Stockwell plays a mystery writer who has Got It All Figured Out (RIP Angela Lansbury). Frankie Faison is here to be the Black guy who gets killed first. There’s a blind Shining-child who helps out by feeling the spooky vibes. Not gonna blame King (who cameos) since I remember digging the original story, and despite all the clunky dialogue, the new version is worth the ride.