The Time Machine

The Time Machine is a remake of the 1960 movie of the same name, both are good but the new version is excellent.

I have to say I found this movie to be a great tribute to the the original 1960 version. I normally don't write reviews but I made an exception for this one. I found it to be a nostalgic delight and was pleased with how they overlapped the two timeliness at the end. Well done.

THE TIME MACHINE is a science fiction romance featuring Guy Pearce as the college professor and Samantha Mumba as the love interest. Ms.Mumba lives in the distant future, and resides in a primitive vertical village built into the steep sides of a canyon. The movie features plenty of gee-whiz gizmos. These gizmos will be the delight, especially to children between the ages of eight to fourteen. The opening sequence of the movie takes place in a college and in the professor's laboratory, and the viewer is treated to plenty of gizmos, including an early version of the electric toothbrush. Then, we see the time machine, with its brass fittings and whirling crystalline components. And then, in the distant future, the viewer is treated to a melange of shelters, ladders, windmills, and other devices, all of wood and natural fibers, which belong to the primitive civilization of the Eloi people. In my opinion, the first third of the film is the best part. Mr.Pearce is courting actress Sienna Guillory, in the spare moments that somehow seem to be left free from his busy schedule of teaching and research. The turn-of-the-century society, as shown in the first third of the film, is one of turn-of-the-century prudishness. In one scene, Ms.Guillory is shocked (but happily so) when Mr.Pearce kisses her in public. While at an evening ice skating date, Mr. Pearce presents Ms.Guillory with an engagement ring. Ms.Guillory is not only beautiful, but her lips and cheeks quivver in a fascinating and fetching manner, in response to Mr.Pearce's interest in marriage. Any viewer of this display of little twitches and quivverings of pleasure, will be convinced that such is the stuff of movie actors (and not within the achievable realm of any ordinary amateur actor). At any rate, the viewer's exposure to Ms.Gullory is cut short by a street thug, who slays her by the ice skating pond. Mr.Pearce responds with an expressions of shock and agony. Again, such expressions are within the capabilities of an rare and occasional trained actor, and not within the realm of amateur actors. In response, Mr.Pearce devotes himself to building a time machine, with the goal of traveling back to the past to change what happened. He succeeds, in part, because he is able to meet Ms.Guillory shortly before her demise, and he succeeds further, by convincing her to travel away from the ice skating pond. But alas, she is run over in an accident with a horse-drawn carriage. The film shifts gears, and Mr.Pearce decides to travel forwards in time for an answer, where his goal is still to save Ms.Guillory. What thus occurs is, at least in my opinion, one of the finest sequences in film history. The earlier film from 1960 contains an equivalent sequence, but it is clumsy and clunky compared to this sequence in the Guy Pearce movie. At any rate, the viewer is treated to a particular, static location (Mr. Pearce's laboratory) but where time races forwards by many years. We see a view of the women's shop across the street from the laboratory, where the style of the fashions displayed in the front window is updated every few seconds, where the hemlines rise ever higher. We see a bird's eye view of the laboratory, where small structures are replaced by skyscrapers. Eventually, Mr.Pearce halts his time travel, and finds himself in a modern society where the mining taking place on the moon resulted in an accident where the moon got partially shattered, and is missing a few chunks. This moon scene is one of the cleverest in the history of cinema, in my opinion. An engaging part of this movie, is when Mr.Pearce meets an ordinary young woman with her bicycle. The woman glances at the time machine, parked in an alleyway, and she makes the comment that it looks like a cappuccino machine. (I like cappuccinos and, to my knowledge, this is one of the few existing jokes about cappuccinos. To digress a bit, it might be noted that Gary Larson has a cartoon about lattes, where a cowboy says, "Latte, Jed?") Then, Mr.Pearce leaves the bicycle woman, and continues traveling in time. The viewer is treated to scenes where thousands of years are compressed into a minute, and we see erosion and canyons being formed with the passage of time. Mr.Pearce eventually halts in the far, distant future (the year 802,701 A.D.), where he makes an acquaintance with the Eloi people and the lovely Samantha Mumba. There are many engaging and charming episodes in this part of the movie, when Mr.Pearce gets to know the Eloi people, and where he wins their trust. Much of the rest of the movie concerns the Morlocks and their evil leader, Jeremy Irons. While I did not particularly care for the part of the movie featuring the Morlocks, nothing can be done about this, since they are an integral part of the original TIME MACHINE novel. At any rate, the Morlocks are scary and they jump around like grasshoppers and they chase people, and eventually they eat people (but this eating is not shown). Then, Mr.Pearce hikes down into cave and eventually confronts Mr.Irons. To me, this part of the movie was really stupid. First of all, Mr.Irons just looks like himself but with tons of white makeup. Aside from the gobs of white makeup, there was no attempt to change his morphology from that of a regular human being. To conclude, I enjoy watching the first hour of the movie, periodically, perhaps once a year. The first hour of the movie is a clever, heart-tugging, science fiction romance.

Great movie with great special effects. Loved the storyline and the acting was top notch.

I love this movie.. waiting on the next with the same main character!!!!!

Good movie

Time Machine movies always interest me

I've a confession to make - I'm in this movie as an extra. I'm one of the out of focus musicians on the bandstand in the Central Park scene. (I spent a week of nights freezing my butt off in a park in Schenectady while they filmed it.) That out of the way, I'd like to make some comments. This movie was not as well received as the 60's version. (It's been years since I saw that one, so I can't really compare.) There are several reasons. One is the problem with turning the story into a movie. The original HG Wells epic isn't really a story of any great character depth. The Time Traveler goes into the future, discovers things haven't really worked out for the human race and after some narrow escapes, comes back to tell a few friends about it before disappearing back into time. Plenty of big ideas and a long vista, but not much of a story in personal terms. Basically, it's just a travelogue. The 1960 version took the basic ideas, and turned it into more of an adventure film rather than just a Big Idea story, fleshing out the Time Traveller and making him much more of a person the audience could get emotionally involved with. It was well done and enjoyable to watch - but also had the advantage of presenting a lot of novel ideas and imagery on screen for what was the first time for many people. Fast forward to 2002. Time travel is old hat to audiences; they've grown up seeing it in all kinds of variations, from tragedy to comedy. Ditto for dystrophic post-apocalypse futures. This latest version attempted to refresh the story by giving the hero (And yes, it's also a hero story) much more of a background and motivation to travel in time. Further, it added a complication HG Wells never addressed - the trouble with the paradoxes of time travel. It was a more ambitious storyline, and ultmately, harder to bring off. The bar was higher, the goals were greater, and the end result didn't quite succeed as well as the first movie in putting together a sufficiently satisfactory conclusion. The other thing that happened is the future changed drastically between filming the movie and releasing it. There was supposed to be a scene showing New York City being destroyed by huge chunks of falling space debris, including the Twin Towers. Before they could release the movie, 9-11 happened, and there was no way they could let it go into the theaters after that. Months of delay and some re-working followed, and they never quite gave it the promotion it needed. All that being said, if you've never seen the George Pal version, and just watch it for the story you see on the screen, it's not the worst way to spend a little time. The scenes in 1899 are fantastic; NYC a bit over a hundred years later ain't too shabby (the first scene with Orlando Jones is a hoot), and the special effects are quite enjoyable. Some day, I'm hoping they will release a version restoring the footage that had to be cut; I'm still wondering how they had to change the movie to work around that, and what it might have done to the overall result. Just for fun, if you can find someone who has never seen either film version nor read the book, I'd like to know how they'd react to the 2 films if they saw the Simon Wells version first, and the George Pal version second.

I've watched this version many many times and it remains one of my favourites. As a fan of the original 1960 version also it is easy to compare the two and yes it is a loose remake but in my opinion it should be judged on its own merit. Many reviews have mentioned plot holes and while there are a few they don't detract from it being a wonderful little film. The main cast are great with Hollywood A lister Guy Pearce as the brilliant but heartbroken Professor Alexander Hartdegan and Sienna Guillory as the love of his life Emma. Phyllida Law, Mark Addy, Jeremy Irons, Samantha Mumba and Orlando Jones also star with a cameo from Alan Young from the original version. The special effects are a massive update on the 1960 film and with stunning scenery and a beautiful soundtrack by Klaus Badelt this is a wonderful and thought provoking little movie

Je cherchais ce film depuis longtemps ! Je ne suis pas déçue ! J'adore ! En version française pour ma part. Boîtier correct, aucun soucis.

これはこれでいいと思う。

Tel que décrit

Super film reçu rapidement merci