Time After Time (1979)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent but underrated film

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A terrific premise: What if H.G. Wells really invented a time machine and Jack the Ripper escaped to the year 1979 in it? Great special effects sparingly used at the start and finish of the film, when the time machine "travels". My only complaint are the hidden "plugs" for the Hyatt-Regency Hotel chain. Even a dinner scene is filmed in their trademark "revolving restaurant" at "The Top of The Hyatt". A bit slow in building up the story. Does not take the cheap way out and does not become a slasher movie. Some blood and a few body parts. A young Mary plays a currency exchange employee. Naturally it's a "London Bank" in San Francisco. Both "The Ripper" and Wells exchange their antique gold coins there. There is a proverbial "game of chess" played between the two. Wells tries to alert the authorities and he gets arrested as the suspect in a string of murders. Using the name "Sherlock Holmes" makes him seem quite mad to the police. As usual, why "Jack the Ripper" is compelled to slash women remains a mystery. Great ending, as Wells returns to his own time and takes "the girl" back with him. They marry. More a love or adventure story than science fiction. Most enjoyable. Several "best" reviews do a wonderful synopsis of the plot. I won't attempt an improvement here. There is one question, however: How did the time machine first get there before Jack the Ripper arrived and how did it end up in San Francisco not London? There is a time paradox there. How the existing museum piece and the "real" machine manage to converge on the same timeline is never explained.

"Time After Time" is the sort of escapist fantasy that you just need to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy--and very enjoyable this film certainly is. Additionally, it's quite romantic and is a movie I strongly recommend you watch.The film begins in London during the time of Jack the Ripper (David Warner). Coincidentally, the famous writer H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has just built a working time machine and the Ripper uses it to avoid being caught by the police. But Wells knows he cannot allow this maniac to escape and travels to 1979 in search of the murderer. There, Wells falls in love with a lady (Mary Steenburgen) and enlists her help to find the killer.This movie works for a variety of reasons. It's certainly one of McDowell's best performances and it's nice to see him being vulnerable and more multidimensional than his other famous roles (such as in "A Clockwork Orange"). The film also looks and sounds wonderful (with a lovely score by Miklós Rózsa) and is wonderfully directed by Nicholas Meyer. Well worth seeing and a rousing adventure that both men and women will likely enjoy.

I really wasn't expecting very much out of this, but after having watched "The Time Machine" I stumbled upon this movie and decided that I had to give it a try. It had a decent enough cast - Malcolm McDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen being the stars (along with a very small part that lasts no more than a few seconds for a very young Corey Feldman), and while it seemed a bit (OK, a lot) silly, the basic story was at least a little bit intriguing. It has early sci-fi author H.G. Wells (author of "The Time Machine," played by McDowell) actually inventing a time machine. At a dinner party with some of his friends (similar to inventor George Wells in "The Time Machine") he reveals the existence of the machine, only to see it used by Dr. Stevenson (Warner) to escape into the future, because the police had discovered that he was Jack the Ripper. With the machine returning to Wells' lab after Stevenson had left it, Wells follows him into the future to prevent him from continuing his murderous spree in another time.Some things about the machine made little sense to me. Like in the original story, the machine doesn't move through space - only through time. That was established. But then Wells makes the comment that moving forward or backward in time depends on whether the machine is travelling eastward or westward. How can it be travelling in either direction if it doesn't move through space? And how, if it doesn't move through space, did the machine take both Wells and Stevenson to San Francisco in 1979? Just because it had been found and put on display in a San Francisco museum? Wouldn't where it ended up in the future be dependent on where it started? I was confused by all that to be honest. But, getting over that confusion, I found a story that was actually quite entertaining.It's exciting enough. Not edge of your seat stuff, but you do find yourself rooting for Wells as he tries to track down Stevenson, knowing that if the Ripper is left loose there's going to be a blood bath in San Francisco, which has already started by the time Wells arrives, two prostitutes having been murdered. The movie has an amusing "fish out of water" aspect to it as we watch Wells try to come to terms with this very new and different environment - 1979 San Francisco being much different than 1893 London, where he began. There was also a really nice chemistry between McDowell and Steenburgen, who meet as Wells exchanges some 19th century English pounds for American dollars. There's an attempt at linking the story to Wells' real life through Steenburgen. She plays Amy Robbins - and Wells really did marry a woman who was one of his students named Amy Robbins in 1895. So the story, which has them falling in love in 1979 in San Francisco and then returning to London in 1893 offers a sci-fi version of how the two met.I also found myself thinking about Nicholas Meyer, who directed this. Meyer is probably best known for his involvement with some of the Star Trek movies - and he helped write the screenplay for "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." It was also a time travel movie, with the crew of the Enterprise facing the same fish out of water experience in San Francisco. I wondered how much that screenplay might have been influenced by Meyer's work with "Time After Time." On the surface, this movie does sound silly. But it turns out to be a pretty well done and entertaining movie. (8/10)

Nicholas Meyer directed this imaginative if dated film that stars Malcolm MacDowell as H.G. Wells, who is an inventor of a real time machine that he shows off to friends in 1890's London. One of his friends, a surgeon named Dr. John Stevenson(played by David Warner) is really Jack The Ripper, whom the police have finally tracked down to his home, but John/Jack escapes in the time machine to the year 1979, in San Francisco California, where Wells follows him, but instead of his predicted utopia, is shocked to find it more to John/Jack's liking, though Wells is still determined to stop him, with the help of Ann Robbins(played by Mary Steenburgen) a woman he falls in love with... Entertaining and well acted, though marred by being overly preachy and obvious. Still, well worth a look.