Time After Time

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable "period piece" (the period being the 1970s)
Review: I remember really liking this slight romance when I first saw it, ages ago, in movie theatres. The story of a fictionalized H.G. Wells following Jack the Ripper into the future (1970s San Francisco to be exact), incidentally falling in love with a modern woman while attempting to recapture the villain, holds up acceptably but shows its age.

Mary Steenbergen's plays the freethinking bank clerk for whom Wells falls. She overplays the part and her accent seems to have been imposed upon her in an effort to make her seem as different as possible from the British Malcolm McDowell (Wells). The accent itself wanders up and down the East Coast, at various points landing in Boston, New York, and several locaitons in the South.

The screenplay also lacks subtlety and may seem campy to modern viewers. David Warner as the Ripper--a truly fine villain--is made to say things like "Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur!" while the angelic Wells intones "Every age is the same. It's only love that makes any of them bearable." The music is high melodrama (shades of "Vertigo"'s soundtrack).

But for me it was like a trip back in time--to the 1970s, when I was more readily charmed by them. I admit it--I had that silly haircut, I wore those odd clothes, I liked the movie then...and I still like it now.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Fantasy Misses the Mark on All Counts
Review: I purchased this video based on the many positive reviews here at amazon.com & based on my interest in the historical Jack the Ripper. I was sadly disappointed that this fantasy missed the mark on so many counts. Although I don't expect a fantasy movie about time travel to be heavy on the realism side, it could have a little more basis in historical fact without harming the film. Jack the Ripper was known to be active in 1888 (some say even as late as 1891). So why set the film in 1893? Wouldn't it have made mores sense, even on this fantasy level, to say that the way he escaped detection (his identity to this day is unknown) was by using the time machine in 1888 (or even 1891)? Another problem is the characterization of H.G. Wells in such a wimpy manner. Are we to believe that this wimpy pacifist would actually hunt one of the most ruthless, violent individuals in the history of mankind without so much as a weapon? Would it have spoiled the movie so much by giving the Wells character a little more backbone? And what exactly is the point of the musical watch? Is the photo in it that of his mother, a girlfriend, or what? Perhaps I fell asleep & missed the explanation of that part. I expect a film about Jack the Ripper to have at least a little suspense & a few scary parts. There were three scenes where this was attempted, & all three scenes fell far short due to poor direction. The late 1970s oh so dated clothes & hairstyles also hurt. Jack the Ripper in bell bottoms & hippie gear? I think not. If you like cutesy romances, you may like this film. If you like your science fiction on the soft side, you may also like this film. If you like a degree of historical realism in a film about an historical person, or if you expect a movie about an extremely violent serial murderer to have some suspense or scary moments, better look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: AN ENJOYABLE SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY MOVIE!!!!!
Review: THIS MOVIE POSES QUESTIONS TO IT'S AUDIENCE THAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT REALLY WANT ANSWERS TO! HOWEVER, IT PROVIDES THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS ALSO.
THIS IS A VERY UNIQUE AND ORIGINAL FILM. THE TWO MAIN CHARACTERS ARE PORTRAYED BY MALCOLM MCDOWELL AND DAVID WARNER.
ALSO FEATURED, IS MARY STEENBURGEN.
THIS MOVIE IS WELL WORTH WATCHING IF YOU ENJOY SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FILMS.
IT WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH A FEW LAUGHS AND IT IS NOT A BAD WAY TO PASS AN HOUR AND A HALF PLUS!!
THIS FILM WAS ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 1979, BUT IT STANDS THE TEST OF TIME QUITE WELL.
MORE THAN LIKELY, YOU WILL ENJOY IT "TIME AFTER TIME" ALSO!!!

Rating:
Summary: you can watch this time after time
Review: This movie is really good. I think just about any movie with time travel is interesting and exciting although not necessarily realistic as we know. I saw a show on tv one night and one of the men talking about time travel said one day it might be possible to do it but we would only be able to travel into the past,not the future because it hasn't happened yet. I thought that made sense and sounded believable. In this movie two people go into the future-one the good guy the other the villian.The good guy is Herbert George Wells, an inventor, the other the notorious Jack the Ripper aka John Stevenson, Wells' friend.
This movie starts in 1893, five years after Jack the Ripper murdered those prostitutes and begins with a new victim getting her stomach ripped open. Don't expect too much in the way of murders-they only show you two of them and the rest you only hear about.
As for Malcolm McDowell this must be his best role. He is surely an excellent actor and he really steals this show in my opinion, not David Warner who plays the Ripper.McDowell usually plays the bad guy but I like him so much more as the good guy which he plays so well.
Also starring in this movie is Mary Steenburgen and she is well casted as a bank clerk who hits on Wells, asking him would he like her to show him San Francisco. San Francisco although a little hilly for my taste, is still the best city in the world and is a great location for this movie.
What is maybe a little surprising in the end is that she goes back to the past with Wells, even after she told him that she was a modern woman and wouldn't belong in 1893.
There is one thing that is a little puzzling about this movie too. When Wells gets in his time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper, he starts off in his house in London and somehow ends up in America. Now logically, the time machine cannot move without help so it can only go forward or backward in time so I wonder how it got to America.Don't let that stop you from watching or buying this. You can watch it time after time.

Rating:
Summary: SF meets psycho-killer/mystery
Review: It's been said that there are only seven basic plots in existence, and the pursuit motif must certainly rank as one of them. What makes it work is the spin that's put on it. "Time After Time" works because of its unusual, yet plausibly treated, gimmick: a chase through time itself.

The movie begins in London in 1893, where we find the 27-year-old H. G. Wells (McDowell) writing newspaper articles on free love ("I've got my little experiments to pay for," he says) and plugging socialism to his dinner guests. He's convinced that "I belong in the future"--that "mankind is...on its way to a Utopian society...no crime, no war, no poverty...no disease...perfect equality with women." And, to prove it, he has constructed a time machine (the same one about which he will eventually write his famous novel) in his basement. The dinner party is interrupted by a Scotland Yard detective and a detachment of bobbies: Jack the Ripper, unheard of for five years, has just broken out again--and turns out to be none other than Wells's guest and long-time friend, Dr. John Leslie Stephenson (Warner), the chief of surgery at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Trapped, he uses Wells's machine to flee into the future. The machine soon returns to its point of origin, thanks to a failsafe circuit installed by Wells, and he, blaming himself for having "set that madman loose on Utopia," pursues and ends up in 1979 San Francisco, where he finds Stephenson and loses him again, meets Amy Robbins (Steenburgen), the liberated young woman who runs the Foreign Exchange desk at the Frisco branch of the Chartered Bank of London, and must at last save her from his former friend. A closing crawl (though rather difficult to read) assures us that Wells did indeed marry a woman named Amy Robbins, adding a touch of versimilitude to a fantastic (in the best sense of the word) premise.

Even before we know that Stephenson is the Ripper, we sense something of the ultimate resolution of the story through a skillful use of foreshadowing: Stephenson, who plays chess regularly with Wells and always wins, modestly says, "I know how he thinks, that's all"; Wells declares, "One day I shall win," and Stephenson replies, "When you learn how I think"--something he clearly doesn't believe Wells ever will. The time-travel effect is simple but imaginitive, involving chiefly multiple photographic images and newsreel soundtracks; the machine itself has a suitably Victorian ornateness about it, and Wells's explanation of how it works, though necessarily simplified for his technically naive guests, seems completely plausible. Unfortunately there's no satisfactory explanation for why he ends up in San Francisco (in the middle of a museum exhibit titled "H. G. Wells: A Man Before His Time"), instead of remaining in London. (This deficiency is remedied in the tie-in paperback novel, by Karl Alexander, which, though long out of print, may be available secondhand.)

McDowell's portrayal of the young and idealistic Wells is, with the building suspense of the story, perhaps the highpoint of the film. His astonished reactions to various aspects of the future are too numerous to describe but all quite comprehensible. Steenburgen describes him as giving off a "sort of little-boy-lost quality," and he does. Yet in the moment of testing, his character shows its flexibility; even though he proclaims that "The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas," he is himself forced to raise it--or prepare to raise it--by buying an automatic at a pawnshop.

Stephenson's murders, though not graphically portrayed, may be a bit intense for subteen kids, and will almost certainly lead to questions about who, and why, Jack the Ripper was. And Steenburgen always seems, to my mind, to be trying too hard with her profanity--though as a woman of the '70's this might be understandable. Still, the four-day pursuit and the developing attachment between Wells and Amy--each building in intensity and suspense with a pacing that does great credit to scriptwriter and director alike--provide the chief motifs and should interest boys, girls, and grownups equally. What's more, this introduction to Wells as a human being may inspire young people to search for at least his science-fictional works. Though definitely not a video to watch on Halloween, or when you're alone at night, it has some important things to say and a fascinating story to tell, giving a unique twist to an almost hackneyed basic plot.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite movie!!!
Review: I saw this when it came out in the cinema and it instantly became my favorite film. The wedding of history and sci-fi is simply stunning. the concept of time travel brought to a contemporary light. Sadly, this film was not promoted well when released and has thus been delegated near cult status. I watch it about every 3-6 months and it never loses it's magic. A REAL winner!!! A+++++.

Rating:
Summary: I've seen this time after time
Review: I first saw this on the big screen in 1979. I was impressed by the re-working of "the Time Machine" theme. In this case it is H. G. Welles as the hero of the story as he journeys to then contemporary Los Angeles in order to battle Jack the Ripper (who has used the Time Machine to escape late 1800's London.

I love the scene when H.G. goes to MacDonald's.

The film suggests right at the very end that it is H. G.'s journey through time that allowed him insights into the future which his novels became famous for (viz. The Shape of Things to Come).

This is one of the few times I've seen Malcolm MacDowell as the good guy. Unfortunately, it's another bad guy role for David Warner.

Rating:
Summary: Naive but good
Review: Simply put: This is the version of "Time Machine" that I like most.It does have its naivete but this makes it really cute.
Malcolm McDowell as H. G. Wells is really captivating and funny.

I found the story more "plausible", in spite of the inclusion of Jack The Ripper, than the other versions of "The Time Machine" I know.

Rating:
Summary: Not This Time...
Review: 'Time After Time' is one of those movies that still entertains 20+ years later, but those 20+ years have not been kind to it.

H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has invented (no big surprise) a time machine in the year 1893. He has just shown his friends his new invention when one "friend" named Dr. John Stevenson takes off in the new machine. Why would he do this? He's really Jack the Ripper, running from the police. Wells travels to find the Ripper (when his time machine returns) before he can terrorize 1979 San Francisco.

Okay, it's far-fetched, but I'm willing to forgive the premise. But we're supposed to believe that after years of killings and evading the police, the Ripper would allow his identity to be discovered so easily? I don't think so.

Time travel is a difficult concept to pull off in a story. It's got to be explained convincingly or at least plausibly without playing tricks. Wells explains to his friends that the machine is solar powered. Then how does the Ripper use it at night??? (Wells does too, for that matter.)

The chase scenes do not work, especially in one case: Wells is chasing the Ripper through several downtown San Francisco buildings. What would you expect in a chase scene? Action, right? Close-ups of the two characters with intense looks on their faces. Strained breathing as one man races towards another. What do we get? Long shots of the two men making them look like two ants at a picnic. (And SLOW ants at that.) Sorry, not convincing.

Also in the "not convincing" category is the musical score. Don't get me wrong, Miklos Rozsa is one of my favorite film composers. He did great work in the 1940's and 50's. That's the problem. The score sounds like it's straight out of the 1940's and 50's.

I won't give away the ending except to say that it is completely implausible and unsatisfactory. But judge it for yourself.

Why three stars? McDowell and Steenburgen are such good actors, they rescue the film from becoming a waste of time. David Warner, usually a great villain, is not given enough opportunities to make him really believable as a really nasty, murderous Jack the Ripper. Again, not convincing.

The scenes between McDowell and Steenburgen work the best. Also watching Wells try to survive 1979 San Francisco offers some good moments. But unfortunately, 'Time After Time' as a whole has not (Dare I say it?) stood the test of time.

Rating:
Summary: a true sci-fi classic
Review: To finally see this great film on dvd and in Panavision is fantastic after years of watching it on a badly cropped vhs.
The amount of extra detail yielded is a revelation and director Nicholas Meyer's compositions look superb.
If you've never seen this film before you're in for a treat-a really clever script combined with brilliant performances make this a standout film of the genre and a personal favourite of mine.David Warner is excellent as Jack the ripper.
Chilling,just chilling as he utters "I'm home" when he finds himself in a violent modern day San Francisco.
Miklos Rozsa's fine orchestral score adds greatly to the atmosphere.