10 Complex Movies You Really Weren't Prepared For

In the strange and plainly bizarre sci-fi yarn Predestination, Ethan Hawke - who seems to alternate his time between acclaimed arthouse flicks and B-movie schlock - plays a "Temporal Agent" on a dangerous mission. It's his job to go back in time and (you guessed it) stop bad things from happening before they do.

It's a premise we've encountered countless times before in the realms of sci-fi, and yet almost right out of the gate Predestination opts to do something different with its conceit: it chooses to explore a number of subjects you never could have premeditated, such as gender binarism, gender fluidity, and intersexuality.

Written and directed by the Spierig Brothers, it's a film that is willing to push its ludicrousness to the very limit of bewilderment: plot twists, plot turns, and plot paradoxes are thrown into the mix at every available moment, and yet for all its narrative complexity (your head will hurt as you try to understand what's going on), the story keeps you riveted because it's a) very intelligence and b) so darn fun

Chalk that up to the fine performances from Hawke and co-star Sarah Snook, and a script that manages to stay connected to its own internal logic.