Time After Time (1979)

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Take the start of The Time Machine, where H.G. Wells invites friends to dinner so he can show them his time machine, but imagine Jack the Ripper is among his guests and makes a quick getaway to the future (which in this case is 1979). That's Time After Time. A mixed bag of a film, it spends a lot of time on fish-out-of-water material with Malcolm MacDowell's Wells running around modern San Francisco, chasing after his former friend (played by David Warner). Kind of takes some of the urgency out of it, but on a plot level, it all makes sense, and Wells isn't as stupid as a lot of other "fishes" in similar stories. One of the things that makes it interesting is that Wells and Jack know each other, there's a relationship there that gives the chase more resonance. And though I'm not sure the climax is entirely earned, it's that relationship that motivates Jack's final pangs of humanity. Maybe. Mary Steenburgen is also good as the liberated woman Wells falls for; she has more agency than expected. Really, aside from some pacing issues, the only things the movie doesn't succeed at are the special effects (not a surprise or any real problem) and the awkward mechanics of how the time machine operates (which telegraph the villain's defeat). 4 years 11 months ago