Time After Time

Time After Time (1979) has a premise that fits in one sentence: H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to San Francisco in 1979 after the Ripper steals his time machine. The film plays this straight rather than as a joke. Wells here is not a novelist but a man who actually built the machine. He believes the future will be a utopia and arrives to find war on television. The Ripper tells him the opposite: this era suits me, here I am an amateur. That exchange is the whole idea of the film and it still lands forty five years later. It was Nicholas Meyer's first film as director. He would go on to make Star Trek II and carry this tone into science fiction. One footnote: Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen met on this film and later married. It runs 112 minutes and the effects belong to their period. They look naive now, though the film never depended on them. Good for: classic science fiction, time travel, and genre built on an idea rather than spectacle. Less good for: there are several murders and they are hard for the era. Anyone expecting modern action pacing will not find it.