Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Dorosute no Hate de Bokura)

 The premise is irresistible: a fly-in-the-wall's view of how a bunch of friends and co-workers find a window in time that connects two monitors. Whether one of them is anchored two minutes in the past, or the other two minutes in the future, is not a useful way of looking at it - For this bunch of goofballs, it's enough that they can chat with their future selves, and prank their past ones.

 Café owner Kato (Kazunari tosa) discovers the time window when he closes up shop and heads up to his apartment one flight of stairs up. There he receives a message in his Apple TV from himself, who's downstairs, two minutes in the future; so when he incredulously runs to the computer screen downstairs, he finds himself repeating the message he gave himself.

 From there the situation spirals as his much more enthusiastic friends (Riko Fujitani, Gôta Ishida, Masashi Suwa, Yoshifumi Sakai and Aki Asakura) get involved, all incredulous at first and then desperate to play with the possibilities allowed by this breach of physics.

 They soon devise an ingenious, Primer-like hack to be able to extend the amount of time they can see forward/back to (by bringing the two monitors to the same room, like a pair of mirrors facing each other), get into trouble with petty criminals, use their time powers to survive, and finally run into the movies highest-concept time conceit, which comes straight from either a silver-age sci-fi classic or a great 90's action/sci-fi movie, take your pick.

 It's breezy, slight, often very funny, and ridiculously well-made; The film is put together as a series of extremely long takes edited together seamlessly, but unlike obvious inspiration One Cut of the Dead, it at no point calls attention to the gimmick. The shots are carefully planned and shot with an unobtrusive handheld camera that follows one character or another; Director/cinematographer/editor Junta Yamaguchi deserves a lot of praise for how crisply he presents the action devised by scriptwriter Makoto Ueda.

 The film is terrified of losing anyone to the mild mindfuck at the heart of the story - every time a complication is added, most of the characters basically huddle and explain things to each other, trying to cut things into as small pieces as possible (I was surprised no sock puppets came out at any point). This is the film's biggest problem, as it kills pacing several times in the movie; At least some of it is due to cultural differences, as I've noticed these sort of exposition issues in a lot of Japanese media. The same goes for character's slightly exaggerated personalities and acting.
 The other issues are minor - there's a couple of chicken/egg script problems, as well as a couple of too-convenient elements (just how long are Apple TV cables anyhow?)

 But it feels petty to hold these issues against an otherwise what's essentially an immaculately crafted trifle; It's slight, sure, but it's also ridiculously clever, inventive, and full of energy. The characters are likeable and their fooling around with a potentially mind-breaking glitch in reality entirely endearing.