CineLinkr #125: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Timecode records four continuous views at once, all shown in separate quadrants for 97 minutes. Mike Figgis conducted the camera operators like musicians. Looking away becomes an editorial decision the film makes you own.
🟢 Easy: Consciousness jumps into another body
Movies: 18 Again! · All of Me · The Skeleton Key · Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
All of Me gives Steve Martin one of his best physical comedy assignments: half his body belongs to Lily Tomlin. He walks like two people lost an argument over the same pair of legs.
18 Again! swaps a grandfather and grandson, while Jumanji sends teenagers into adult game avatars. The Skeleton Key removes the comic safety rail. Its transfer is theft, and the reveal changes who has been speaking through whom.
🟡 Medium: Radio hosts drive the story
Movies: Play Misty for Me · Straight Talk · Pirate Radio · On the Line
Clint Eastwood's directing debut, Play Misty for Me, turns a late-night request into a stalker thriller. Jessica Walter makes the repeated song title sound less like a dedication and more like a warrant.
Straight Talk lets Dolly Parton accidentally become an advice host. Pirate Radio puts its DJs on a ship outside British jurisdiction, and On the Line traps Mel Gibson inside a call-in nightmare. Every microphone here comes with consequences.
🔵 Hard: Runtime nearly matches story time
Movies: The Set-Up · Timecode · Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes · Last Call
The Set-Up runs 72 minutes and covers roughly 72 minutes around one compromised boxing match. Robert Wise even shows clocks to keep the pressure visible.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes builds a tiny time machine out of two screens in a Kyoto cafe. Last Call uses simultaneous split-screen takes, while Timecode asks four cameras to survive the full feature without a cut. Real time sounds simple until one missed cue can ruin the day.
🟣 Tricky: Actors play fictionalized versions of themselves
Movies: Tristram Shandy · I'm Still Here · The Congress · The Trip to Italy
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play competitive, insecure versions of themselves in both Tristram Shandy and The Trip to Italy. Their impressions become a form of territorial behavior, especially when Michael Caine enters the conversation without being present.
Joaquin Phoenix used I'm Still Here to perform a public collapse as if it were documentary fact. The Congress scans Robin Wright into a commodity called Robin Wright. The names are real. The people attached to them are under active revision.
The radio set was the friendliest group today, which says more about the other three than it does about radio.
Over at PixelLinkr, the jump button went missing and movement somehow became more complicated.