The Time Machine (2002)

Best movie of this year hands down!

A Masterpiece!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I give this film a 10/10 for personal reasons, though I think an average score of 5.9/10 is an awful joke. It goes to show the mainstream are as often wrong as they are right. The Time Machine has everything I love in a movie: existentialism, loss, abstract symbolism and reflection, mystical fantasy of the serious kind, bold adventure and traveling to the far-far reaches of the future, a beautiful and passionate main character, a powerful lesson learned in the end, and easily one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard. Listen to halfway through Stone Language. This movie itself is up there with Mulholland Dr.

I was interesting in seeing this movie if only because my brother likes it so much. I even went so far as to see it with him and he wanted the volume up and everything else. I had heard pretty bad things about this movie and wasn't expecting something great. After watching the film, my brother basically said that he realized it didn't hold up. That's nostalgia for you. I guess if I read the book version or seen the original movie, I would have liked it. There are definitely good scenes in this movie, but it just comes off as way too silly. It tells the story about this guy who travels back in time to save his girlfriend's life, but she dies anyway.He then comes to accept that he can't save her, but then travels into the future to find out why he can't. Then he accidentally travels much further where people live in tribes and there are these giant noseless hairy people who hunt after them. The worst part is that half of the movie takes place in this time. I wanted to see more of a futuristic setting. It was just silly with how these guys look. Their leader is some white and blue guy who looks nothing like them. This film was just too silly for me to take seriously, but I do like the scenes where the main character accepts his fate. Time travel fiction can do much better. **

Short and not so sweet, here were go. I love everything science fiction/fact. I've always been curious about time, time travel and paradoxes, so I thought I'd give this movie a watch. I have nothing to compare this film to because I haven't seen the original, but this particular film went from great, to somewhat boring. I enjoyed the atmosphere throughout the first quarter to half of the movie, and then it went very far-fetched and uninteresting (to me). I wish this film stuck to the 1800's - 2000's era because that's where the interesting story-line was. I wanted to see more time traveling as well, because the scenery changes throughout the years were very intriguing and borderline eye-candy to a sci-fi fan. The characters were pretty average and difficult to grasp onto. Visuals were nice. Plot wasn't overly enjoyable. It's worth a watch once, but I don't think I'd watch it again. So many other movies to watch. Mediocre. 5/10

The newer version of The Time Machine was interesting, but could have been so much better. Granted a "fleshing out" of the story is mandatory, based on the brief novella by H.G. Wells, by both versions of the movie. Some strange directions the newer version took were the Eloi being darker-skinned people, with many "African themes" throughout, their cliffside homes, and the Morlocks are now a threat both night and day (!) Lead actor Guy Pearce was miscast in my view, and just didn't project as the hero/adventurer in this film as expected. I also didn't understand the physics of the dramatic ending; how the time machine could self-destruct and only destroy the lair of the Morlocks and nothing else (?) There was one memorable scene, very well done, that had me wishing the entire film had been this innovative: at the end where it shows past and present superimposed on each other, Guy Pearce's friend and maid, along with Guy Pearce in his new life role.