Time After Time

Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine3.0

So, what did we learn today? That Back to the Future III wasn’t Mary first rodeo into the whole time travelling shenanigans.But yeah, this was a nice little movie with some neat ideas that are for the most part, well executed and exploited. We basically have many of the tropes of the subgenre but this time, the traveler in question is HG Wells himself (nicely played by Malcolm McDowell), and he must stop none other than Jack the Ripper, who uses Wells time-traveling machine he has on his basement (as you do) and goes on the loose in 1979 San Francisco, continuing his reign of terror, though I guess now he justifies himself by using WWII and Jimmi Hendrix as an excuse for human decadence. You know, evil stuff. Now, why does he keep killing sex workers and not other people in general or something, I guess once you have a kind, its hard to let go? The acting as a whole is fine, Malcolm delivers on the charm and wit and his chemistry with Mary is solid. They do their best with the writing they are given, which, to be honest, is alright. It tries to juggle a lot of stuff but lacks focus. For example, there’s a scene where HG tries to sell some jewelry and we see the old jeweler was a Holocaust survivor, but the movie doesn’t do anything about it. There are some good moments of humor, but nothing that made me laugh out loud. Some of the killings, like the woman being lifted out of the water in the bridge scene, were unexpectedly graphic, with the corpse and all. The cinematography is good, though I found the switch from the early scenes in the past with this quality to be jarring, as it was very evident it was done on a studio lot, yet everything in the future appears more cinematic.All in all, a fun little time-travel movie with a solid premise that fans of the genre will probably find enjoyable enough.TODAY SCHEDULEHam on RyeTime After TimeThe GunfighterThe Island

Penny_S5.0

Watched this today amidst a full theater, with director Nicholas Meyer & producer Steven-Charles Jaffe in attendance. It was so fun to laugh aloud with everyone, watching a film’s story that’s entirely set in San Francisco. It’s a perfect time capsule of the City in the late 70s.The screening was followed by an interview of Meyer & Jaffe. Both are in their 80s, sharp as tacks, & really loved talking about making this film - honestly it seemed especially Meyer could go on for another hour. A truly marvelous event!

Slig0013.5

High concept time travel adventure, focusing on HG Wells as he pursues Jack the Ripper to modern times. There's no real attempt to make the time travel aspect make any sense - early on in the film, the time machine manages to make a jump in time and cross continents aswell as the action relocates from London to San Francisco for reasons that don't really make any sense. The sci-fi element to this isn't too important - it's all about the concept and the characters really. The film does the whole 'fish out of water' thing as our hero finds himself in 1979, marvelling at all the modern technology and not understanding things etc. It's all rather quaint but moderately amusing. There's plenty of time to criticise the modern era - apparently 1979 has more in common with the ethos of Jack the Ripper than the socialist utopia it apparently should have been. Malcolm McDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen are all really good in the central three roles. The film fuses a serial killer chase with romantic comedy well; the two play off each other nicely as the film gets going. Time After Time doesn't really excel at anything, but it is all good fun. First time I've seen it in about twenty years and it's as good as I remembered it.