Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

bettycjung 6/30//18. A fantastic time travel movie that makes the most of the genre. McDowell does a great job of oozing wonderment when he finds himself 70 years into the future yet manages to finds the killer he is after as well as meet the love of his life. Since this came out in 1979 a lot of the technology is already outdated, but still futuristic for a man from the 1800s. Great movie worth catching!

Indieshack Really quite excellent movie, with great film score from Miklos Rozsa, truly doesn't matter about the SFX quality in the few places they are used. Nicholas Meyer's tour de force. The actors are great.

vincentlynch-moonoi I was one of those people who, though fairly young at the time (30) did not like "A Clockwork Orange". As a result, for years I dismissed anything with Malcolm McDowell. In recent years I began to rethink my avoidance of McDowell, particularly as he grew older...I like him more. Now, after finally watching this film, I'm really going to have to rethink McDowell. This is a great film, and McDowell's performance is superb. And I say that as one who believes that time-travel films rarely work.Strong point #1: The producers and director paid attention to detail, not simply advancing the plot. How would a time traveler act and think in a totally new environment? Well done.Strong point #2: The acting. As I indicated, Malcolm McDowell is excellent here; very believable. David Warner is very good as Jack the Ripper. This was only Mary Steenburgen's second film. At first she comes on as playing dumb, but as the plot moves forward she seems more believable.Strong point #3: There is sentimentality, not just brutality. There is love, not just murder. This is occasional humor amidst all the drama. There is wonder and amazement.This does not mean that all is well. I guess I can't blame the producers for the special effects...after all, it was only 1979. But they are a bit primitive compared to what we have today. And. once the film begins to build toward a climax, it seems as if things get a bit more mundane (I mean really...why would the cops believe someone who identified himself as both H.G. Wells and Sherlock Holmes?).But aside from that, there is little to criticize here, and it's nice to get a glimpse back of modern culture almost 40 years ago.I'm overall impressed and highly recommend the film...and I give it something rare for me -- an "8".

lasttimeisaw A fiction adventure of the Victorian writer H.G. Wells (McDowell), who time-travels to San Francisco in 1979 to capture the infamous Jack the Ripper aka. Dr. Stevenson (Warner), who uses Wells' newly-invented time machine to escape and keep slaughtering women in the city, meanwhile he gets hooked on a local bank clerk, a modern woman Amy Robbins (Steenburgen), whose life comes under threat during the cat-and-mouse chase, Wells has to rescue her and settles the old scores with Stevenson. For its own sake, the film leans more on a romantic adventure than a Sci-Fi no-brainer, predates the ultra-popular BACK TO THE FUTURE franchise (where Steenburgen also stars in its third installment), it pairs Wells' ungainly anachronism and old-fangled chivalry with Amy's active happiness-pursuing initiative from women's liberation movement, it is most tantalizing when the pair connects under an unconventional method when the woman takes the lead and not shies away about it, Amy's racy retort to Wells' polite concerning is "Forcing me? My God, Herbert, I'm practically raping you.", while Wells is an avant-garde exponent of free love, this is one significant aspect he envisions for a Utopian future. McDowell is innocuously likable with an unsophisticated urgency to right the wrong and Steenburgen acts with a distinctive drawl which sounds both seductive and peculiar, the two not just click wonderfully on screen, in reality, they also tied the knot in 1980, but eventually broke up after 10 years. As for Warner, his gore slashing atrocity is mostly dampened for not going to far, so his portrayal of the notorious killer is not startling enough, strangely, his final gesture even strikes as a tacit agreement with Wells, permits him a way out of an alienated real world. Then with regard to the time machine gizmo, it looks chintzy even compared with George Pal's THE TIME MACHINE (1960, 6/10). However in its London prologue, Wells laboriously clarifies how the machine functions, with an emphasis on two important devices, one is the key, which the passenger should keep with to prevent the time machine returns to its departure location after the mission; another is the vaporising equalizer, if it has been pulled out, the passenger will travel through time without the time machine, he will be stuck into an infinite dimension, so there is no coming back. The former grants the precondition of Wells' pursuit in the first place while the latter guarantees the demise of the evil Ripper like a cinch. Director-screenwriter Nicholas Meyer really makes an effort to make the story at least logically passable, unfortunately, the happenings in San Francisco do not deserve such treatment, the sloppiness of a museum without any security measurement, or how Amy stays put in the exact same place even she is fully aware a murder will befall upon her later is alternately frustrating and befuddling, all feel more slapdash is that the suspense has been honed up greatly owing to Miklós Rózsa's formidable symphonic score, if only the listless writers can squeeze their brain to confect a more believable scenario. So TIME AFTER TIME has its innate clumsiness, but it also has a beguiling goofiness underneath to greet new visitors, plus if you are really into time travel or Jack the Ripper, this amalgam may shred some dim delight.