With the past looking increasingly nice as compared to today’s recession-times, and tense holidays making us wish we could just accelerate into 2009 and beyond, the good-natured movie addicts at Unreality bring us this list: The 10 Best Movies Based On Time Travel. A classic trope of action and sci-fi film plots, the pool of movies to pull from for this list features some incredible entries (does Russian Ark count?), so some of their choices seem odd.

• 1. The Terminator: Okay, this is fair, it’s the best time travel franchise and this entry is especially good.

• 2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Yes, okay, it’s good, but good enough to monopolize the top of this list, really?

• 3. Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban: Not as epic as the above time travels, this recent classic explores the minute complexities of short-distance time travel.

• 4. Donnie Darko: Okay, the pre-eminent practitioner of contemporary cinematic time travel (Richard Kelly) needs to be on this list, but why not freak people out by using Southland Tales instead?

• 5. 12 Monkeys: No beef here, this one should certainly be here, although the film it’s based on La Jetée should figure into this list too somehow.

• 6. Back to the Future: Again, an obvious pick that had to be in here somewhere, but why are the future and far West sequels excluded? More problematically, where does this leave Brokeback to the Future?

• 7. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: A welcome relief from the self-seriousness of so many time travel movies, this is stoner humor by way of Mel Brooks-style period pastiche.

• 8. Flight of the Navigator: Huh? A Disney alien-time travel movie made it onto a list with so many more deserving entries getting snubbed?

• 9. Futurama: Bender’s Big Score: Given how many great TV time travels come to mind, it’s nice to be able to include at least one thanks to this straight-to-DVD Futurama flick.

• 10. The Time Machine: Classic 60s genre fair that, despite aging so-so, still makes the more recent Guy Pearce disaster version make you want to speed up time.

Unable to go back in time to talk to the folks at Unreality about the mistakes they’ve made, all we can do is provide some Listicles additions:

Demolition Man: Outstanding disposable 90s popcorn stuff, this action-comedy future-fest stars Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes as present-day bad-asses on either side of the law tearing it up in an ultra-repressive future. The supporting cast includes Rob Schneider and Sandra Bullock, and the best running joke is that future people, committed environmentalists that they are, no longer use toilet paper, but nobody will tell Sly how to use their substitute, “the three shells.”

Timecop: Despite the disappointments of JCVD, this classic of mediocre 90s blockbuster fare (set in the future, 2004, nifty!) gets so caught up on the physics implicated in a person occupying the same space as their past selves that you get sucked into the dilemma without realizing. Before you know it, you’ll be yelling at the screen: “No, you can’t touch that guy! You’ll collapse the space-time continuum Jean Claude, don’t do it!” He’s Van Damme though, and he’ll do as he pleases.

Time Bandits: Though Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys did make the cut, this surprisingly awesome sort-of kids’ time travel epic should be in the Top 10. The premise involves traveling through time to steal from the most wealthy people in history. The troop of roving bandits (all played by short people) accidentally swoops a young suburban boy along with for the adventure, and they help each other along. The supporting cast includes many of Gilliam’s Monty Python cohorts, like John Cleese, who portrays Robin Hood in this amazing clip:

Jolly good!