Extras: Creating the Time Machine, Creating the Morlocks, animated
sequence with storyboards, audio commentary, a deleted scene, visual
effects featurette, stunt fight choreography, archives, production
notes, filmographies, and theatrical trailers.
Director:
Simon Wells
Screenplay:
David Duncan and John Logan
Cast:
Alexander Hartdegen: Guy Pearce
David Philby: Mark Addy
Mrs. Watchit: Phyllida Law
Emma: Sienna Guillory
Vox: Orlando Jones
Mara: Samantha Mumba
Toren: Yancey Arias
Uber Morlock: Jeremy Irons
Time is easily our greatest enemy as a society.
It seems to move so fast lately as days fade to weeks, minutes to hours. It seems just like
yesterday that it was May and everyone was talking about
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and now, it's August already. That's
crazy. And if it was socially acceptable to be openly paranoid I would
say that the government is speeding up the clocks... well probably
not. Anyway, time was this film's greatest enemy as well. Not only is in
the title but it was victim to bad timing. Dreamworks pushed it back
from December to March and it didn't do as good as they expected.
Personally, I would have released it sometime in June just before
the big guns of Men in Black II. But I'm not in charge of how it works
so I'll just review the movie.
The Time Machine is a remake of the classic sci-fi flick of
yesteryear. The key word is classic.
Rollerball
was just a joke (that's
probably why I found it entertaining) and now they're going to remake
George Romero's
Dawn of the Dead!
When will it end? When will Hollywood learn to leave movies alone. Probably
never but this gets a few marks over the old version.
The film tells the story of a brilliant professor named
Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) who becomes obsessed with the idea of
building a time machine to save his fiance (Sienna Guillory) who was
killed shortly after he proposed to her. He eventually builds it (I
still don't see how it would only take four years but, hey, this is
Hollywood) and goes back to that fateful night and does everything to
avoid it but no matter what he does she dies every time. Depressed and
looking for an answer, Alexander climbs into the time machine and
travels far into the future until he reaches 2030 and up until he winds
up in an apocalyptic world where the moon has fallen and two races
exist: he humans and the morlocks.
This was one of the worst movies I saw all year. I think maybe
it was because I was expecting too much but having a chance to watch it
at home and now know what to expect, I actually cared for it. It's not
anywhere near the original but still mildly entertaining. The best
scenes in the whole movie involve the Morlocks (created by Stan Winston)
and those are the first hunt and the end chase. I'd reccommend it just
for those two scenes.
Into the disc. The video is a little suprising, especialy from a
studio like Dreamworks. Letterboxed at 2.35:1, it looked a little matted
or maybe my eyes were just playing tricks on me. I noticed a lot of
compression artifacts in the interior scenes and the backs of jackets,
mostly just the solid colors. Outdoor scenes, except for the ones at
night, are done great but the artifacts are evident. I think maybe the
disc was overloaded with material.
The sound is great though. It has everything, seven audio tracks(!)
including commentary and DTS options. What more could you want?
The extras are truly plentiful. Even though it didn't do that great at
the box office. Everything from making the machine to the Morlocks. For
some reason there is only one deleted scene and it is an intro that runs
7 minutes. Very extensive. My only gripe are the menus. When viewing the
special features you have to highlight an empty space for the option to
appear. At least it's not as bad as the recent Harry Potter DVD (don't
get me started about disc 2) but kind of annoying.
Overall, Time Machine is a decent flick if you try not to compare it
to the great original. It does have it's flaws but the Morlock scenes
make up for it, too bad they're very close to the end of the film.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
