Time After Time (1979)
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
Writer H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to modern day San Francisco after the infamous serial killer steals his time machine to escape the 19th century.
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What critics compared Time After Time to
McDowell played Wells as the inventor who used his machine to hunt Jack the Ripper through time called Time After Time.
The oft-televised The Lodger (1944) is moodier, while 1979's Time After Time is more fanciful and more fun.
(The movie owes a secret debt to 1979's underrated "Time After Time," in which H.G. Wells tracks Jack the Ripper.)
Still, if the movies can give us H.G. Wells as a real time traveller (“Time After Time”) and Abraham Lincoln as a vampire slayer (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), why not a Poe who is a lover, a virile man of action, an amateur sleuth who sacrifices all for art and love?
“Project Almanac” isn’t “Time After Time” (1979) or “Back to the Future” (1985) or “12 Monkeys” (1996), but the new release does turn out to be a surprisingly jaunty trip for jaded Gen-Y kids.
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For me, the point at which it becomes apparent is during the high school dance, when he’s ditched by his date (who has been forced by her mother to accompany Napoleon as a sympathy thing), and eventually ends up dancing with the girl he really likes (Tina Majorino, WATERWORLD’s little girl all grown up) to the strains of “Time After Time.”
The possible answer to the dilemma of the missing Avengers is the film’s biggest joke, and I mean that literally since the dialogue will reference such fan favorites as “Back to the Future,” “Star Trek,” “X-Men,” “Terminator,” “Time After Time” “Somewhere in Time,” “About Time” (but not “Timecrimes” and “La Jetee,” the two coolest movies of that type ever made).
Of course, all time-travel films both good (Time After Time) and bad (Time Cop) ultimately bite off more than they can chew in trying to create logical-seeming constructions that are elastic enough to encompass situations outside our normal frame of understanding.
As for the time travel aspect, "Predestination" follows the lead of some of the best films of its type (a short list including the likes of "Time After Time," "Back to the Future II," "Primer" and "Looper") by embracing the potential paradoxes rather than trying to ignore or explain them away—the results are utterly preposterous, of course, but in a manner more entertaining than annoying.