ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

A very different kind of time travel story, in which the period of time the machine can visit is limited to just four days.

Sound useless? Actually, when it comes to terrorism, that can make a big difference.

Denzel Washington is an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who investigates the terrorist bombing of a ferry boat in New Orleans, with the help of a new device the government is fiddling with — a time machine.

The plot is complicated, but one thing the story does exactly right is deal with those pesky alterations in the timeline caused by changes in the past — a fine example from the classic "if you fix this, you'll screw up that" school of temporal excursions.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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If my brilliant review above didn't convince you to watch this movie, maybe the trailer will put you in the mood.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

Sounds a bit like Retroactive, where you can only travel back about twenty minutes. But there are consequences when you try to change the timeline.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Never heard of that one, so I looked it up on IMDB. Here's what it says about Retroactive. It sounds interesting.

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A psychiatrist makes multiple trips through time to save a woman that was murdered by her brutal husband.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

In my humble (HA!) viewpoint both DejaVu (2006) and Retroactive (1997) are great films. Maybe they should be chat-night movies?
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

[Custer]

I thought I'd watched Deja Vu, but the blu-ray package is still sealed, so it must have been some other "limited time travel hops to avoid something bad in the city" movie, I suppose. Was a train involved, or maybe a ferry? At least if I do unseal it, it hopefully won't be, in the words of the great Yogi Berra, "Deja Vu all over again"...

[Bud Brewster]

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Well now, that is a mystery. Deja Vu does involve a ferry boat that explodes and causes many casualties (the event that the time traveler tries to prevent), but the movie Source Code is also a sort of "time travel to prevent disaster" move (and a great one), which involves a train wreck caused by an explosion.

I own (and love) Source Code, and I did enjoy (but don't own or love) Deja Vu. Maybe I should watch it again.

Hmmm . . . seems like I said that before.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 46 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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~ The movie went through pre-production in New Orleans. Just a few weeks before production was to begin, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. With the location in ruins, the movie made the decision to find a new location to shoot. A few weeks after the decision, canceling the movie altogether was in talks. Finally, three months after the hurricane, the film returned to New Orleans, Louisiana and began pre-production once again.

Note from me: This illustrates just how hard it is to get a movie made.

~ Jim Caviezel decided, at the last minute, to do the stunt where he is hit by a car himself. If injured, he could have been paralyzed.

Note from me: This certainly doesn't sound smart. Leave stunts to stuntmen, I say.

~ Disaster relief teams, who helped through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, were recruited to help make the film. The end credits pay tribute to their bravery.

Note from me: When life serves you lemons, make lemonade.

~ Scriptwriters Terry Rossio and Bill Marsilii didn't feel Tony Scott recaptured everything in the screenplay. They felt he was more interested in the action scenes, rather than the intricacies of time travel. They wrote a plot that was airtight, but in Scott's hands, the finished product is now filled with plot holes. Rossio was so disillusioned with the film, he's never seen it. Scott also admitted he did a mediocre job directing the film, but blamed that on the nineteen-week production schedule, which wasn't as long as he wanted.

Note from me: I don't remember the plot very clearly, but I do remember being puzzled by a few plot elements. Now I know why.

~ There is almost no profanity at all in the film.

Note from me: Well, I'll be damned

~ Tony Scott, Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, and Jim Caviezel held a news conference upon their arrival to New Orleans to announce their intention to employ the local New Orleans community and incorporate post-Katrina New Orleans into the film.

Note from me: Admirable.

~ This is the second film about the past and present overlapping with one another that Jim Caviezel has been in. The first was Frequency (2000).

Note from me: I absolutely love Frequency!

~ In the film the scientists describe how they caused the northeast blackout of 2003 in order to produce enough power to fuel their time machine. In reality, it would take more energy than our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime in order to not only create but maintain an Einstein-Rosen bridge of such size and capability.

Note from me: This seems like hard claim to prove. I know it's all about the mathematics, but . . . what if somebody left out a decimal!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Morbius]

I could be mistaken, but the writer of this film is also a 20K Nautilus fan. Great movie, a favorite. Like the ending.