Dimensions

19 August 2016. This English production offers up a period drama with a science fiction theme as background. As such, this movie is not a thriller or adventure or action movie. In a similar way that Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) or Some Where in Time (1980) involved time travel but focused more on the journey than the travel through time, Dimensions is more a romantic drama with a sense of emotional mission, purpose, and even loss. It has the period trapping found in the English production of The First Men in the Moon (1964) or American production of The Time Machine (1980). Yet it is probably best reflective of Australia's Peter Weller's period piece Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) which contained the same quality set design and costumes and the same quality photography and setting experience. While it doesn't quite have the sustained air of mystery as Picnic at Hanging Rock, there is a both rather poignant romantic climax as well as a more defined resolution.

This will be my first movie review, and I realize that I'm quite late to the game here, but I just had to say something about this film.

For the last few weeks, I have been binge-watching indie sci-fi movies online. I've seen some pretty good ones but this is the first that I am leaving on my Watchlist, because it is the first that I actually want to watch again.

The reasons are varied, but the main one is that it doesn't leave you hanging. No, it isn't what you may have hoped for but I get really tired of the movies that draw you in emotionally then fail to give any closure.

This movie has a sweet, heart-warming end and it leaves me smiling. If you're looking for a good story with some science sans the glitzy special effects of Hollywood, then I recommend giving this movie a go. Two thumbs up!

I came upon this film by accident. I thought I'd chosen something else on Amazon Prime, but I must have clicked this movie by mistake. The music reeled me in first. Then the time frame reeled me in; I love re-creations of the 1920's. After that, the subject matter piqued my interest. For once there was a screenplay that was cleverly written, without robots, blood, gore and violence.(Well, there was a touch.)

The music had a haunting quality that I loved. It was a smattering of classical pieces, especially by Fredrick Chopin, done in modern fashion, interspersed with the Gramophone effect. I then was wondering how they'd pull off the time travel, and that's where it gets interesting: The mechanism consisted of some steam-punk props, electrical gadgets and an old upright piano. The story line was more or less a romantic novel, but it didn't go too overboard. It's a picture that was a bit difficult to understand, yet very clever. Coming from a family whose father figure was an engineer, it made me think, and I'm still thinking about it. No special effects were necessary. I added my own imagination to it, and there you have it, a very entertaining movie-but you had to work your brain for it!

Very refreshing indeed!

It's a Time Travel Story. And it's listed as Science Fiction, thereby.

But Be Advised: It's NOT 'The Time Machine'. Nor is it your standard Hollywood Special Effects wagon-train.

No Splashy special Effects. No Journeys to the end of Time. No Monsters. No Weird Paradoxes. No Dinosaurs either.

It DOES has an element of Time Travel...but that's all. The rest of the Movie is a distillation of a very nice work of emotional Fiction. It's a Love story about Three Childhood friends in 1920's era England. Once you settle into the measured, dialogue driven pace of the story. I found it elegant, touching and memorable.

Totally Girlfriend Friendly, BTW.

Science fiction is a finicky thing. Depending on your approach and your tastes and background, this flick can either be 1 to 10. I encourage the reader to read the reviews as a form of entertainment in itself, I would also ask the reader to refrain from critiquing this movie as if it had a limitless budget and was hell bent on employing the best special effects possible. In other words, a Hollywood movie. Sadly, too many of our young are trapped there.

It has been my experience that the best SciFi allows you to use your imagination. You read SciFi and imagine great things that Hollywood couldn't begin to portray. "The Time Machine", 1960, must be one of the greatest movies in this subject. It has roots in H.G.Wells' 1895 "The Time Machine" novel. Interesting point, the character in the movie shares a similar name with the author of the book. The acting may not be the best, the special effects not out of this world and the script could use more "airing". Your imagination, however, takes over and fills in the blanks to make it a very interesting movie to this date. If the script and story line can allow your imagination to flourish, then at the end of the movie you find yourself thinking. Although the movie ended.... you're still going.

It's nice to see special effects to replace your imagination every now and then but I find it's best when it is left to the imagination. This is why most stories that try to make the transition from book to movie fail.

On acting.... you may have an idea how a soldier would reacted when facing a platoon of the enemy on his own. We can draw from our limited experience. But has anyone ever met an alien? How does one act when stepping into a time machine? How does one act when they fall in love with someone who wishes to step into a time machine. You can have a whole movie on that alone. Acting in this instance should allow some leeway for the viewer to fill in with their imagination. On the other hand, acting may be what saves the scene such as the end scene to Casablanca with a fake aircraft with little people or La Marseillaise scene sung in defiance to the Germans. In this movie, although the genre was SciFi, the secondary theme was love. Another, loss. Yet another, jealousy. This requires fine acting, not supper acting, and I think it was done adequately well. Not great but well. To tell you the truth, my heart broke for one of the characters.

Lets use our imagination on one angle of the movie.... sound. If you wish to employ frequencies in your experiment and need a fundamental series of frequencies, the piano is an interesting choice. And it's calibrated to some standard. Believe it or not, there are a few established standards in piano calibration and tuning. The piano can be a scientific instrument in every sense of the word. So it wasn't a screwball idea to use a piano. But a piano is also musical. It has Rhythm and beats and bars. Now, imagine an infinite number of future threads to an event. In a song, we may have four beats to a bar. Every four beats you repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Almost as if it is infinite. It generates a Rhythm that explores a theme, or event. Changing notes in one bar with just four beats (4/4 for example) could change the entire theme of the song. Mapping out the future of Victoria's event in the well and navigating it successfully with a sound signature (so may beats to a bar) is an interesting connection to the piano. We can now layer other life experiences to music, such as falling in love, as was the case when they danced through the time map to music, expanding the parallelism to a theme or song. Interesting? How about dancing to music when the old man removed their masks in the beginning of the movie? How about our young hero dancing with the blindfold on in front of the well after removing the welded well cap at the start?

In my experience, I have found that the best attributes to enjoying good SciFi is the person's ability to imagine. Overload the person with special effects and at the end of the movie the person may experience relief (and to beat the crowd out of the theater) instead of thought provocative mesmorization as your view the credits.

Enjoy this movie and see what happens to you at the end.