Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Fun Movie
Review: " Timeline" is a lot better than I expected. It's an old fashion science fiction adventure- yes the team that goes back in time is a bit dense but you would not have a two hour movie if characters did the the smart thing all the time. Director Richard Donner stages some spectacular battle scenes so if you like medieval action youll love it- also its a cleverly designed DVD- so make some popcorn- sit back and have so fun.
Rating: 
Summary: it sucks
Review: int he movie things happen almost randomly. Subjects are explained in a matter of seconds leaving viewers completely and utterly confused. If you like this type of movie you should read the book timeline. it is so much better. it explains everything. for example it takes about 50 pages to perfectly explain how the time travel works. in the movie things are also inaccurate. some of the guys in the movie were really girls in the book. events happened differently and it sucked. i repeat this movie sucked.
Rating:
Summary: Decent film
Review: First of all I don't know why people are saying this movie is terrible and the money shouldn't be spent to rent it? I think they're all forgetting that it is an action/sci-fi/drama flick and aren't keeping in mind that movies like that don't need character depth and such to make it decent. I personally thought it was worth spending the money to see in theatres. I had read the book and loved the whole concept and I thought the action was pretty good. The fire lit arrows being shot into the sky towards the castle was an awesome sight. True the movie could've been better, but not everyone can do a Michael Crichton novel justice like Spielberg did with Jurassic Park and JP 2: The Lost Word. At least the only thing Spielberg changed in Jurassic Park was keeping Hammond alive (in the book Hammond gets left on the island when he goes out looking for his grandchildren on his own and a pack of Velociraptors find him). If Spielberg had been behind the helm of Timeline it would've been even better, but as it is Timeline is a movie I don't mind owning on DVD one bit.
Rating: 
Summary: When stupid people do stupid things in the movies.....
Review: What is wrong with the people who made this movie? Why are the characters in it so gosh darn stupid? You know a movie is bad when you want to kill the protagonist more than the on screen villian. First, lets dispense with the plot. Time travel stories can be tricky, but not this one. "We cannot disturb the past" one on-screen village idiot spouts, but then they proceed to go back into the past and start killing people, setting fires and generally alter history - WITH NO ILL EFFECTS!! You don't want to be seen or heard on this rescue mission? Fine, quickly gather a small team of mercs and historians with some military training (believe me, they exist) who can speak English with no accents, and can speak some French or at least understand it; arm them with tranquilizer guns, modern repelling gear, night vision and knockout gas and have them operate at night only. Did ANY of this happen? Of course not. Let's not forget another one of my favorite stupid stupid plotlines: sending a Frenchman, who has no common sense and poor vision, back into the past...behind the battle lines of the English! "We need him!!" the lead character screamed. Can you guess what happened to him? The lead character was another problem: making googly-eyes at the female archeologist during swordfights, whining and generally acting the fool. My favorite person, however, in this "Supertrain" of a movie was the mercenary guy who brought a grenade back to the past. Guess when he pulled the pin? YOU GOT IT: after he was in a fight, after being transported back to the present, thereby blowing up the time travel lab to create more "dramatic tension"...UGH!! Bad, bad,bad,bad movie.
Rating:
Summary: If I could only choose negative 5 stars
Review: This is the worst time travel movie ever made and may be amongst the top 20 worst movies ever made period. I am more entertained by reading, in disbelief, the reviews of those that actually liked it than I ever was at any point during this movie. It is atrocious. Do NOT waste any money only this turkey.
Rating:
Summary: A poor adventure movie at best
Review: To put it simply, Timeline is just one of those movies where you're better off watching the trailer than the actual film itself. A sci-fi/historical adventure flick, timeline's plot involves a son along with a bunch of comrades goin through a wormhole to rescue his father from the 14th century. Of course they arrive at the exact date of a major assault by the french on the english garrason in the village of castle gaurd. This may all sound very exciting, but in practice it is not. The movie doesnt feel very exciting at all and in fact I lost interest half way through. The acting is well below par and the plot is just very uninvolved. The special effects too were not at all very stunning, and nothing about the movie rated all that well with me. Its too bad too, because the preview for the movie looked pretty good... oh well they already got my money to rent it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: Wow this movie was weird. A secret organization finds out how to travel through time to France in this case. The war with France and Britan. I have never thought of the middle ages being so horrible and intense. I liked this movie because these archeoligists who love history finally realized they were in history and already responsible for the present. It was the OLD Planet of the Apes type of time travel where the historians discover a cycle! Cool Very Cool!
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Action
Review: Although it is not as good as the book, the movie is full of action and interesting enough to keep your attention. The actors do a very good job and what I especially liked was the costumes -- they were period-accurate but not in-your-face costumes like most Elizabethan era costumes. Some ideas may seem like we have seen them a lot (with all the other time-travel movies), but this was still unique in some ways (the book was even better). Good movie worth watching.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly better than the book, believe it or not
Review: 3 1/2 stars. The amazon.com reviewers for this movie seem to be mostly of two types: middle school kids and pseudo-intellectuals. This is neither horribly acted, nonsensical trash, nor is it an instant classic/tour de force/best movie ever!!. It's an entertaining movie with some fair-sized shortcomings. First, let me address the people who compare this movie with the book. As a history buff, I found the book terribly entertaining but terribly flawed (in fact, if you want to read my review of the book, look for the amazon.com review with that exact title). I found at least twenty significant plot flaws in Crichton's book and I really have to wonder how the editors let it loose on the public without tying up many, many loose ends or logical inconsistencies. Happily, the director Richard Donner and/or his screenwriters cleared some of those up, often by simply omitting them from the movie. For instance, the protagonists in the movie have a reasonable number of moderately plausible escapes from danger, one of which involved Kate climbing out of a castle tower. In contrast, in the book Crichton thought it would be clever to have our heroes make over a dozen utterly incredible, miraculous escapes, three or four of which feature Kate rescuing the others by virtue of her Spiderman-like climbing abilities. Donner also rejected Crichton's ridiculous technological flaw in which he claimed that ITC's machine isn't actually a time machine, but instead sends people to alternate universes occurring at different points in time; if so, how could Professor Johnson, who visited a different, semi-parallel universe, have left his note and glasses 600 years ago in our universe? The cinematic ITC does not mess with elaborate explanations, but simply states that they must be going through a "stable wormhole" into 1357 France. Donner also sensibly axed Crichton's absurd "Green Knight of the Chapel of Death." Donner's Claire was a much more simple, believable character than Crichton's (i.e., she wasn't sleeping with or otherwise manipulating every non-peasant male in the story). Who really cares if the character Chris is the professor's son in the movie, especially given that he does not act quite so foolishly as he did in the book. Let's address the acting. On a one-to-ten scale, the actors here range from about a four to perhaps a six. It was no oversight that none of these performances received Oscar nominations, but they weren't horrendous, either. Pretty much every performance was better than anything you've seen by Arnold Schwarzeneger, Adam Sandler or maybe even Kevin Costner. Nothing memorable, but nothing so poorly done that it ruined the movie. There are some problems with this movie. First, Marek seems too attached to Lady Claire based on very little exposure to her. It might have worked if there was another 20 minutes of interaction between them in the movie. Next, I didn't think Lord Oliver was quite sinister enough. There was also some ambiguity about time in this movie. The spotlight reviewer claims the movie was set in the year 1971. Although at the end, there is some mention about that year in reference to Marek's life, I think that may have been the year of his birth. The movie is either set in approximately present day 21st century or has some big gaffs (I don't recall seeing any cell phones or four wheel drive Volvo sport utility wagons in 1971). Overall, I thought the siege and battle were pretty well done, especially the trebuchets (medieval artillery, like a catapult), except for the archery aspect. First, the castle defenders shoot fire arrows, for no discernable reason, then they switch to regular arrows, which the French call "night arrows" and decide to retreat because of them??!? Doesn't make much sense. Donner kept Crichton's subplot of Professor Johnson creating Greek fire, for no particularly good reason. Just exactly how is it that an archeologist knows how to make an ancient chemical weapon that modern chemists can't duplicate? I rather liked Crichton's end for Donniger better than the movie's, sending him back to a slightly different period of medieval France, exposing him to the plague, but that would not have worked in the movie's technological world. In summary, this was a decent medieval action-adventure/sci-fi movie. It has a very interesting basic plotline, with nothing either stellar or abominable. It doesn't follow the book exactly, which actually is a benefit - this is one of the few movies that is better than the book upon which it is based. Sit down with some popcorn, refrain from microanalysis and enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Just forget the time travel and start storming the castle
Review: When it comes to movies about time travel the one that serves as a bench mark for me is "Somewhere in Time," where on the one hand you have the absolutely stupid idea that you can travel to the past by thinking yourself there, but on the other there are some memorable moments, such as the beginning when the old lady tells Christopher Reeves "Come back to me," and the point where he discovers that Jane Seymour is smiling at him when the photograph that captivates him was taken way back when. The great lesson I learned was that since time travel is impossible you are going to have to jump ahead to the willing suspension of disbelief for any of it to work at all and that ultimately the value of the film is if it has anything interesting to do with the idea of time travel. With "Timeline," the 2003 film that director Richard Donner ("Superman," "Lethal Weapon") made from Michael Crichton's novel, the suspension of disbelief is not that hard to manage. Once upon a time there is a company that was trying to find a way to send three-dimensional faxes (i.e., a "Star Trek" transporter), and they discovered that they were sending packages to not just another time but another place, namely 14th century France. We are told this is because there is a stable wormhole, at which point we nod our heads over that oxymoronic notion and look forward to what interesting things we get to do with this set up. What we get is the siege of a castle, held by the English, by a French army. What we do not get is a real reason why this has to be part of a time travel movie. The reasoning in the film is that the archeolgoist (Billy Connolly), who has been digging up the site in the present, has become stuck in the past, and his son (Paul Walker) and colleagues (Frances O'Connor and Gerard Butler) are sent back to help find him. However, my suspicious mind thinks that maybe what happened was that Crichton had a time travel novel that was not going anywhere and a story about the siege of a 14th century castle that had no real purpose, and he threw the two of them together, because the sad fact is that "Timeline" just does not get those two halves to fit together (there is a marvelous metaphor for this early in the film where one time traveler has made too many trips and his spine and other key body parts do not match up perfectly anymore). My preference is for the castle siege part of the equation; a straightforward movie about a medieval siege would be pretty interested and Donner gets points for doing most of the fun stuff here without resorting to computerized effects. But the assault keeps getting interrupted by the attempts of the time travelers to find each other and get themselves home. Then there is the whole fear about changing the future, which seems rather moot because these people are so far beyond the butterfly effect stage that trying to get history back on track seems rather laughable. Of course this gets tied up with a romantic plotline when one of the time travelers falls for a young woman he meets, only to discover she is the one whose death marks the turning point of the battle. At that point you know he is going to be able to have his cake and eat it too, and the question becomes whether this film can come up with a really neat way of carrying it off. The short answer is "No," it does not, and for those who are fans of time travel films the obvious comparison is going to be to "The Final Countdown" (What if the U.S. had a nuclear powered aircraft carrier at the attack on Pearl Harbor?). But then I am still trying to figure out why Walker is playing Connolly's son and not Butler given their accents, but then I also trying to understand why the trailers think that Walker and not Butler is the "hero" in this story. Then again, if you could show this film to an audience in 1557 I bet they would be really impressed by how this one came out.
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