Similar to the director’s wonderfully inventive Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, River is also about an unusual 2 minute time loop. In this case, it’s a more familiar Groundhog Day type loop with the unique twist that everyone in the loop knows they are in the loop. 

This makes for a unique variation on this premise with everyone resetting to the same place but with all the memories from previous loops. We get to know a bunch of characters in the town and go through multiple variations of how they process and try to deal with their time loop. 

It’s a lovely, charming film with a great use of color. The director clearly has gotten a budget/production value bump from Infinite Two Minutes. He’s playing in the same waters (pun intended) but with more money to spend. 

I had a not-insignificant problem with the film in that I rented it on Amazon Video and, about half-way through the movie, the subtitled de-synced with the spoken dialog by about 3-4 seconds. The on-screen text stopped matching the character and with a good dozen speaking parts, it got confusing… or at least took me out of the moment. This isn’t the movie’s fault, necessarily… but it still effected my feelings on the film.

Despite the technical hurdles, this is a fun, clever, smart sci-fi time loop film. It’s tough to get anything new in this subgenre but director Junta Yamaguchi has done it twice to much success.

Score: 84