Review: Needle in a Timestack explores how love endures when time is in constant flux

Enlarge / Oscar nominees Leslie Odom Jr. and Cynthia Erivo co-star as a husband and wife who fear being separated by a warped time line in Needle in a Timestack, a new film from director John Ridley. (credit: Lionsgate)

A happily married couple finds its life together threatened by a romantic rival who travels back in time to alter his shared past in Needle in a Timestack, a new science fiction film directed by John Ridley. Sure, Needle in a Timestack is not the most compelling title, but Ridley has created a flawed but thought-provoking love story-featuring moving performances by Oscar-nominees Leslie Odom Jr. and Cynthia Erivo-that poses an existential question: how can love endure when time itself is constantly in flux?

(Some spoilers below for the short story and the film, but no major reveals.)

The film is based on a 1966 short story of the same name by Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author Robert Silverberg. Time travel is a common theme in Silverberg's work, most notably in novels like House of Bones and Hawksbill Station. The story goes that Silverberg's inspiration for "Needle in a Timestack" came during a science fiction convention. That's when a friend tried to rebuff a would-be interloper by telling him, "Go away, kid, or I'll change your future." Silverberg thought his friend should have threatened to change the interloper's past, and he realized he had a terrific premise for a story.

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