Rating: 
Summary: Really enjoyed it
Review: I really liked this movie. I don't know how well it followed the original book--I've read other H.G. Wells novels--but unfortunately, never read this one. But I thought this was a very well done remake of the original movie, at least.The special effects were great and the musical score is very beautiful and really adds to the movie. I don't always notice the sound tracks of movies but this one really stood out.You can see how far special effects have come since the original Time Machine movie with Rod Taylor in the 60's. Some of the details were changed in interesting ways--the original movie had a nuclear disaster befall the professor; here the disaster in the future city is the moon breaking up due to overmining, but which was equally dramatic. I thought the casting was also very strong, especially with Jeremy Irons as the head-bad-guy Morlock. Guy Pearce is excellent in the main role. The time machine itself is beautifully realized, and the cliff-dwelling Eloi culture is a nice touch. As I said, I've never read the book, so I don't know if this was how it was in the original, but anyway, it works pretty well in the movie. Another nice touch, which is sort of standard for any sci-fi story about time travel, is that they touch on one of the often-discussed possible aspects or paradoxes of time travel. This is the scene where the professor finds out he can't undo the past. No matter how he tries to prevent it, his fiance dies no matter what. I also found the movie never dragged or got boring in any part. The scenes are just the right length, and in fact the whole movie was only about 1 hour and 45 minutes, if I recall right. But anyway, I wouldn't have minded it being longer, but it was fine the way it was. Altogether a great movie to kill a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
Rating: 
Summary: No need to credit H G Wells
Review: This might have been a good movie if they had called it something else. I really couldn't tell because I was too hung up on the fact that it didn't resemble the original novel at all. If they had changed the names Eloi and Morlock, there would have been absolutely no reason to even credit H G Wells except for possibly the design of the time machine itself. If you are looking for a rather simplistic romance blended with a little bit of time travel and some cool special effects, then go see this movie. If you are looking for the wonder and complexity of the H G Wells novel, stay home and reread the book. Believe me, you will hardly be able to sit through the film unless you completely abandon all hope of seeing any resemblance to the original story. The thing that really bothers me is that there was no reason to make these changes! The H G Wells novel is exciting and suspensful and thoughtful too. The H G Wells book is a masterpiece. This is a paint by number with all of the colors switched around at the very least. It might kill some time, but I wouldn't expect much more out of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasing but not plausible
Review: The new rendition of H.G. Wells' classic The Time Machine, is worth seeing but won't leave you with any particular empathy for the characters. The story begins in compelling fashion with Guy Pearce, as a turn-of-the-century New York university professor. Probably the best most intriguing part of the movie is the first 45 minutes or so which deal with Pearce's infatuation with his fiancée' to be. After that, the time travel simply becomes a farcical and implausible trip to nowhere. The characters are not real; nothing makes any sense, at least not from a scientific view-point. It's too bad because the movie is beautifully crafted in it's depiction of New York of the past, apparently the director and writers were unable to project that magic into the future. I'm sure the video will be out by this summer
Rating:
Summary: People hate most films nowadays!
Review: I just saw that new film "The Time Machine" and I hated it. In fact I hate every film ever made. That's not true. I just lied to you, really I enjoyed the movie. Actually I love movies. I have a large DVD collection with such varied films ranging from Buckaroo Bonsai to Lawrence of Arabia and from American Pie all the way to American Beauty. I enjoy watching movies because they get me excited and take me somewhere else. I tend to get the same good general feelings from most movies almost like when I was 7 and I saw Star Wars for the first time, just usually not as intense. Sure I'm more sophisticated now, then when I was 7. I've been to 'Art School' and I use a Macintosh. I can appreciate a Kubrick film or attempt to analyze the meaning behind 'Deliverance' or 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Nothing much has changed though, that is for almost everyone around me. No one seems to be able to just go to the movies and have a good time and say that they enjoyed a film. Every movie is ripped apart and re-edited by everyone I speak to except a few close friends, family and my wife. It sometimes seems that everyone wants every movie to be at some 'Lawrence of Arabia' level every single time they see a film. The critics are the worst though. I think almost every film that comes out is criticized by almost everyone. I can tell you with certainty that the next Star Wars film will be hated by everyone, so will The Panic Room. Don't see Spider Man it will be nothing but ACTION and SFX, nothing but a fluff piece. Well that is what I keep hearing so why should those be any different. Some sarcasm for the critics...they love that. The critics hate every film. Plus they all seem so angry too. Lighten up you guys! They are just movies. Byproducts of our culture to keep us entertained because we usually have nothing better to do. I do see bad films some times though, it happens. I try not to get too angry. I try to avoid those kinds of films in the future because I like to enjoy myself. The critics do have to watch everything I guess but if they hate most movies then logic would dictate that they hate their jobs. Quit your jobs people! Go for your dream job as window washer or something. When I see Spider Man in a month or so I am going to watch that film and actually imagine that I am Spider Man. Sure I'm not the hip kid I once was, I've put on weight, I am married and have a son. It could still happen though, I could be Spider Man if I wanted to. I'd rather just go see the movie. More than anything I am looking forward to my son getting old enough to sit in a theatre so I can go see movies that critics won't dare criticize. These are those movies that even the critics don't get. These films go beyond Godard and Akira Kurosawa. Beyond surrealism and conceptualism. This is Gooffy-fun-silly-isim and the critics just don't get it. What is with those unintelligent critics? Why don't they get it? Well I'll end by saying that my father and I both enjoyed the Time Machine. I was happy just to sit in the theatre and watch a cool film with my dad, the guy who got me into movies and sci-fi in the first place. Adam Furgang is a movie lover who occasionally writes articles about people and their increasing loss of ability to have fun any more when they see a movie.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid at all costs
Review: What an unbelievable waste of opportunity and talent. The entire second half of the movie squanders each and every opportunity to do something imaginative with the idea of time travel, instead giving us tired old cliches, chases, illogical situations and monsters that look like second rate rip-offs of the orcs in Lord of the Rings, complete with their own Saruman the White. These are too tedious to interest adults and too scary for tots, so they fail on both levels. I teach screenwriting, and over the years have had a number of students write time-travel scripts. Any one of them would have made a better movie than this.
Rating: 
Summary: Posibilities!!
Review: There have been many books and stories on the subject of time travel. One journal in particular has the world's theories on the subject of time travel, the Physical Reviews Letters. I very much enjoyed this movie in particular, do to the thoughts and ideas that went into making every part of it. Useing original ideas, like taking all the worlds knowledge and storing it into one database that would stand running for hundreds of thousands of years. That database alone teaching everybody anything at anytime. This remake of the original 1960 film also used the same Victorian decoration, brass fittings and stream-era dials for the time machine. The size of the workshop that was used to build the machine was close to the same, even the part of the movie where Alexander Hardegan looks across the street and watches the dresses on the maniquins change as he slips through the future. Reading the book by H. G. Wells will help any open-minded person understand where his great-grandson Simon Wells got the Idea for his version for the story. Watching the 1960 version is also helpful, but to truly understand this subject one must be smart and have a large imagination. (Time, by Einstein's equations, was not a fixed property of the universe (moving in one direction at the same rate for everyone, which was Newton's view), but a relative property of things in motion. A clock in motion ticked slower than a stationary clock; a moving clock traveled into the future relative to the clock at rest.)- Popular Science Magazine. I recomend this movie to any geek or adventurer, any body who needs a little mind tease. I know I'm not sleepng tonight, just thinking of the possibilities in the future, and from what we need to learn from the past, just so that it does not happen again. One great show was Sliders, the possibility of alternate universes, I first read about this theory in a old Amazing Stories Book.
Rating:
Summary: A Marvel Before its Time...
Review: Yes, the title was pretty bad. Anyway...I just saw the film today, and I must say, I was quite excited. The big Morlock hunting scene was interesting, if not thrilling. I was a bit surprised at how much they'd changed the original storyline. But I guess it does make up for a few gaps in time [pardon the pun] in the original Wells novel: Like how did humanity fall back down to its primitive [and distinctly Native-American, from the looks of it] roots instead of advancing further. As for the explanation that they'd reached the zenith of evolution and advancement...that just doesn't seem plausible. Covering it up with the idea of humanity's own folly in trying to reshape the universe [or blow holes in the moon, as the film puts it] and ultimately causing their own near extinction is really excellent. Aside from that, though, the story really didn't need all the extra changes. The acting was stupendous. I loved Pearce's fluent facial expressions as he shifts from excitement, to wonder, to anger...all in one minute. The supporting cast was also very good, but of course Pearce stuck out. As for Mumba...her job of acting was marginal, if not average. Irons was marvelous, perfectly capturing cold, apathetic tone of the Morlock leader. It's amazing what blue contact-lenses can do to a man's scare-factor. Orlando Jones was quite good in a role he doesn't usually get to play: any serious role. He was quite magnificent at being what Wells called "the Internet with sarcasm." As for the SFX...The Time Machine's obviously a powerhouse of CGI magic. I mean, to watch thousands of years of geographical change pass by in the same time as it takes to reach down and pick up your fallen box of candy off the cinema floor: as the lady next to me was doing...missed the whole thing, poor dear. The effects of the Time Machine on the things around it also looked great: watching Alexander's locket disintegrate in a matter of seconds [or so it seemed]...that's a new one. The ending lacked a bit, though. I was really hoping to see the ending from the original novel, where Alexander travels even farther into the future and sees the end of the earth, when the sun is so huge it covers most of the sky, and giant crab-like creatures stalk the land. That would've been memorable. All in all, it was a great film. Not your usual winter/spring action flick [and for that I am very thankful] but it was definitely worth my time and money. I know I didn't say anything about the sound...it was finely suited for the tone and settings of the film. All I can say is that I'm glad there were no songs with heavy bass. Thank God!
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining motion picture
Review: I feel compelled to voice my opinion of this movie in large part because of the extreme negative reviews I have read in various places that almost convinced me to avoid this show. I have never read the book, so I was not concerned with the movie meeting any standard of faithfulness to the story on which it is based. That said, the argument that the filmakers took excessive liberty in their telling of the tale may indeed be valid. On its own merit the story told in the motion picture is good; the story is moving and exciting; and the visual effects fit the period sets believably well. I consider it an adventure with an intelligent hero (who must also rely on brawn in his struggle) that allowed me to suspend my disbelief for almost two hours without drifting into boredom or wishing I had done something else. I consider it a good value and thus recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Lurid & Gratuitous Hollywood Propaganda
Review: H.G. Wells gloomy scientific romance about technological "progress" which George Pal adapted into an anti-nuke allegory ("the mushrooms will be here soon") is here turned into a cheesy effects laden piece of trash from the combined talents of Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen. If any moral can be read between the sickingly sweet political correctness it's that the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sub-human animals who deserved to be incinerated. This is crude state revisionism of art which leaves your stomach feeling queasy. A new low even by Hollywood/Hong Kong standards.
Rating:
Summary: it's different but good
Review: it's not the book and it's not the remake of pal (which itself, if you're a purist, would suffer from the same problems this version suffers from -- the eloi speaking english, the romance, etc.) now there are echoes of pal here, from the spining disks of the time machine to the women's store with the changing fashions. other touches are the original filby and the chatastrophic end to civilization (in pal it was the bomb that did us in). naturally this version looks better, it could have used a tad more explination here and there, more scenes with uber-morlock. otherwise, it's watchable and enjoyable.
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