PlatinumRead
Just so...so bad
Siflutter
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Roxie
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
dgdxfilmsinc
I never heard of this movie until early 2018. I only watched it because Christopher Reeve was a great actor and I loved him as Superman. I've never seen Chris act without a red cape before, so I thought it was my responsibility to give him a chance to win me over again without his super powers. Boy, did he win me over with his performance in this movie.At first I thought Chris was playing Clark Kent again, but as the movie progressed I saw that Chris's character was more complex. He has a goal, a desire, a need. And through this performance you can feel every emotion he feels emotionally and physically. You feel the suspense that is creeping in and out of this unique time travel movie.This movie is an example of why I love Film. It's a Time Travel Movie, with a unique idea (different from another Time Travel film like Back to the Future or Bill and Ted), powerful performances (by Chris Reeve and Jane Seymour), and a powerful score (by the great John Barry), and it delivers something fresh that'd I'd love to revisit and analyze even more. From what I understand the writer of this film wrote for The Twilight Zone and I Am Legend, and it really shows. This film is almost like a longer episode of The Twilight Zone but without the great Rod Serling making a cameo. I can't recommend this movie enough for fans of great films. It has some flaws with the "science" or "theories" of Time Travel, but everything else overshadows the few flaws. It's a film that is too beautiful for words. Check it out.
moonspinner55
In 1972, a college writer is approached by an elderly woman who hands him a gold pocket watch and says, "Come back to me." Eight years later, as a professional playwright under deadline, he returns to his old haunts outside Chicago and becomes enamored of a photo he sees of a local theater actress from 1912. Romantic fantasy from screenwriter Richard Matheson, adapting his book "Bid Time Return", has the young man using a self-hypnosis technique to travel from the present day back to the 1900s to meet the mysterious beauty, but her domineering manager may prove to be an obstacle. All the ingredients are here for an opulent, sweeping love story, and yet the formulaic film never lifts off, with Christopher Plummer an arrogant nasty who does everything shy of twirling his mustache. As the eternal lovers, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour are a colorless pair. Seymour has a limited range, though she's well-cast and has the style and grace to carry off her role. Reeve is a pushy, unhappy presence; a light manner or grand emotions don't come easily to him. Jeannot Szwarc directs in a plodding, connect-the-dots fashion, and yet many people have found the picture to be an inspiration. ** from ****
Ross622
Jeannot Szwarc's "Somewhere in Time" is a well made movie with a very extensive amount of flaws and though it isn't one of the best film romances I've ever seen it is definitely very creative and truly original. Christopher Reeve stars as Richard Collier a Chicago playwright who in the beginning of the movie meets an old woman named Elise McKenna (Susan French) in 1972 while he is still in college and she gives him her watch and says the words "Come back to me" and Collier wonders what she means by that for years even after her death. Now the movie is set in 1979 and Collier is working on a play and he is touring a museum and finds an old picture frame on the wall but it doesn't have a name plate on it. So he goes to this old man named Arthur (Bill Erwin) who works at the hotel and he tells Collier that the woman in the picture is Elise McKenna, and he then tries to get as much information about her as he possibly can from reading books, and even going to her house to ask her maid named Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright) and she tells him things about her such as what she was like and all that sort of stuff, and then he goes to his old philosophy professor and asks him about the possibilities of time travel and is told that he has to do self hypnosis. After that he is back in 1912 and sees the younger version of Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) and introduces himself to her and they fall in love with each other but not without dealing with her paranoid manager named William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer) who is totally in love with McKenna and is thinking that Collier would ruin her career as an actress. Everything beyond this point I will not spoil because I feel that the plot elements afterword are too crucial to the story to spoil. The film is based on Richard Matheson's novel "Bid Time Return" and to compare this to other Matheson adaptations that I've seen such as "The Last Man on Earth" and "I Am Legend" as well as great dramatic romantic tales such as "Out of Africa", "Pride and Prejudice" as well as many others this one is a disappointment, the performances aren't very convincing ( with the exceptions of Reeve, Seymour, and Wright who are very good) especially by Christopher Plummer who is usually a very good actor but he sounds very robotic here, also the dialogue in the scenes before the time travel and with Collier and the younger McKenna, is very bland, wooden, and totally boring. This isn't a bad movie or a good movie but a decent one, and it isn't one of the best films of 1980, and to be honest it is a silly movie in the beginning and also is overrated film.
Predrag
"Somewhere in Time" is an excellent film that combines Time Travel with romance, using an interesting and unique idea involving hypnotizing your mind to believe you are actually in that moment in history. If you can avoid analyzing the rationality of time travel and suspend your disbelief, this film will be very enjoyable for you. The idea of traveling back through time to find your soulmate is something both men and women can believe in. It is to the credit of the performances of the leads, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, that the viewer believes that such a thing is possible. Reeve and Seymour also look well together and have obvious chemistry, making their love affair entirely believable. Especially with their first kiss, there is a deep and passionate love that seems entirely real. The third element is the acting of Christopher Plummer, who is always excellent and quite effective here as the overprotective manager of Seymour's character. But, there are two more elements that contributes greatly to the atmosphere of the film - the moving music composed by John Barry, and the Grand Hotel where most of the movie is set. The handsome and expressive Reeve, the calm beauty of Seymour, the brooding and calculating Plummer, the romantic and moving music and the timeless presence of the Grand Hotel combine into a magical film for the hopeless romantic.The movie is slow paced, but has some very touching moments. I love the scene of their first meeting when Elise says, "Is it you?" It contains a minimal amount of swearing (religious in nature) and also the ending love scene, although tastefully done, may cause it to be inappropriate for children under 12. I personally prefer the Hallmark movie, The Love Letter, which has a similar theme but is more appropriate for all ages. It is not surprising that this movie has become a cult classic, with fans meeting every October at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where the story takes place and was filmed. It was also filmed in Chicago. However, the towering success of this film is in its managing to bring light to the this elevated plane of a grand romance, so rare that most of us never even see it for ourselves in a lifetime, much less experience it. We all yearn for it. It is the aerial dream of souls that have evolved to subtle levels of discernment.Overall rating: 9 out of 10.
