By Brian Landa
@BrianLandaLawyer
Imagine a time travel comedy, with elements of fantasy, in the world of video game development. And legendary generational family actor Sean Astin adding another generation with daughter Ali Astin. Matter of Time, from director Jeremy Snead, recently screened at the 2025 Dallas International Film Festival. This one was made in Dallas with lots of familiar faces from the Texas filmmaking scene. A group of friends, lead by Myles Erlick, working to develop a video game on their own, are recruited by a big bad company.
A lot of the drama involves meeting deadlines, which is where the time travel comes into play. The Sean Astin character has a special item, which is kind of a ring, a nice callback to Lord of the Rings. Lots of familiar Dallas acting talent faces show up, including Bryan Massey and Morgana Shaw. I was unfamiliar with Ali Astin before this film, but the chemistry works very well, even though they are not playing father and daughter in this. Dungeons and Dragons plays a huge part in this film. It kind of came back into national attention because of the Netflix show “Stranger Things.” But it never really went away.
Evil boss stories can be very stale, but they are also timeless. Most of us have bully boss stories and can identify. And we all have certainly been under time crunch pressure. Here, Erlick’s use of the time meddling mystical item messes with his own timeline, and his reality gets all out of whack, which affects everything. A female is on the team and there has always been a bit of a spark and energy between a couple of the teammates. So that creates a bit of drama as well.
Arianne Martin portrays Erlick’s mother in flashbacks, with varying levels of emotion. Sometimes cancer flashbacks can be very overbearing, but the subtle way they are used here and Martin’s years of experience onscreen in both traumatic and comedic roles make her feel very real, even with very limited screen time.
The use of animation not only helped with the budgetary restrictions, but also added to the video game sense of the film, because those scenes are filmed as if they are video game sequences. It’s all very creative and undoubtedly Dallas. Everybody knows that old Detroit is actually Dallas in RoboCop (1987). Dallas should always be Dallas. We have a lot of local pride here.
Some of the Dallas Vintage Toys guys were in the house to talk about the experience of having Sean Astin filming there. It’s not just a toy store. They have full-size replicas of a lot of amazing things. They said they had to be very secretive because Lord of the Rings fans and autograph dealers would have overrun the place. It’s likely a main reason why Mr. Astin did not show up to the screening. It makes sense.
My video game executive cousin Nathan Tiras, this film parallels his life, aside from the more mystical magical elements, of course. I had gone to visit the family in Lake Tahoe in the summer of 1998 and he was obsessed with the recently released video game tied to the first Pierce Brosnan film in the James Bond franchise, Goldeneye. It turned out to be one of the seminal video games of the new era.
His obsession with that game and others lead him to become a video game executive and his story certainly parallels this one. I talked to Snead after the screening about the similarities with Nathan and he knows the name. Turns out some of these filmmakers were involved in some actual video game development themselves. Small interesting world.
The Dallas International Film Festival is one of the jewels in the crown of the city, as well as the Texas Theatre where this screening took place. This one was a near sell out and certainly one of the best attended films at the festival, with very lively Q&A. They often quite interesting when there’s a local angle.
Video game development is like documentary filmmaking, or any filmmaking, for that matter. It can take years and result in failure. But there’s always the chance to start over. Money is important, but passion and belief in the project is even more important. Film festivals are in danger with National Endowment for the Arts funding being pulled.
This is often the only place we can see films like this on the big screen. Distribution is a sticky mess, and as an entertainment lawyer, I deal with those agreements a lot.
You can’t even really call them agreements sometimes.
But hopefully this one will see the light of day because it’s a lot of fun and it has a big name attached. And it definitely has the potential for sequels.
“Matter of Time” screened at The Texas Theatre during this year’s Dallas International Film Festival. #DIFF2025
