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Time travel is one of the most heady science-fiction concepts of popular culture. It shows up in books, on television, and in film. This weekend, we can all travel back in time with John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson in a Hot Tub Time Machine, a...well, I think you know what kind of time machine it is. I think we can all agree that, no matter how hilarious it may be (and the buzz seems to be pointing us to the possibility that this is going to be a very funny movie), the concept is ridiculous. John Cusack has said so publicly. Hell, Robinson glares at the camera when he says the name of the movie, so he's got a hefty amount of disdain for it (or it's very self-aware, which is likely the reason).

But time travel movies, of all shapes and colors, are all patently ridiculous. Even the good ones, including the five that I'll be highlighting in this week's A-List, are silly. One of them involves a DeLorean, for goodness' sakes. We're not talking about movies that live in the world that we're all comfortable in. But what makes a good time travel movie? Sometimes, it's when the movie gets bogged down, purposely or not, in the science of time travel, if only to heighten the suspense by throwing overblown scientific terms at the audience, even if some of the terms either are or seem fabricated. However, there are just as many time travel movies that bore audiences to death with such terms, or by sometimes ignoring it (The Time Traveler's Wife comes to mind, with regards to the latter problem).

Some of the movies on this list don't seem like time travel movies in the same way as the common time travel movie. A couple of them don't feature time machines (speaking of, the 2002 remake of The Time Machine...it won't be on this list, and for good reason), or even a discussion of time travel in such a way that Doc Emmett Brown would be proud. That said, they do involve time travel, even if it's in a sneaky way. Frankly, some of the better time travel movies might be the ones that choose to avoid all the discussions of paradoxes and other space-time continuum conundrums. My guess is that Hot Tub Time Machine won't be one of those movies, either, even if the time travel element is more than obvious. Will it one day be considered as awesome a time travel movie as those on this week's A-List? We'll see; for now, read on and find out what the movies are.

Back to the Future

During the fifth season of ABC's Lost (yes, I know, you probably want me to stop talking about it, but you'll have to wait a couple more months), the main characters found themselves traveling through time, without any control on when they'd travel or where they'd travel to. While stuck in 1977, one character was worried that he, like the protagonist of the Back to the Future trilogy, would end up fading away, from his hand all the way through the rest of his body. This is the profound effect the Back to the Future films have had on popular culture. We don't even need to have the characters fully explain the reference; we all know these movies. The series, which was released from 1985 to 1990, made Michael J. Fox a star, gave Christopher Lloyd a supremely weird character to play, this time on the silver screen, and made Robert Zemeckis a director to watch.

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