A Máquina do Tempo

Wonderful!

We're told it's all going to go wrong -- that is no spoiler -- and it's intriguing to wonder exactly how things will go wrong. (There's a short headline in a newspaper which gives a hint of what might go wrong.)

One of the strengths of the screenplay is that everything goes perfectly right -- ignoring one hiccough -- for the first 30 minutes. We need to see just how wonderful their invention is, so we're fully emotionally engaged when things start to go wrong.

The wartime footage is used very effectively. Stefanie Martini gives an excellent performance as Martha. And it's strange to think that Spandau Ballet might never have existed.

After seeing the trailers online but sadly it didn't come anywhere near where I live. That it received a very limited release is such a shame as this is truly a unique, smart, entertaining and wonderfully made film which kept me glued to the screen - tv screen :(( - so much so, I forgot I was watching a film and was totally and utterly immersed. The performances are outstanding - each and every one. The direction is smart and doesn't waste a frame on filler and the atmosphere is spot on, it feels so much like war time. The special effects are worthy of any blockbuster and the script/story is tight and very clever. I like the way it is shot although I guess some people might not but if you turn it off due to that, you are making a huge mistake. I have a feeling this will achieve cult status and hopefully finds its way onto SKY and the like and then enjoys the audience it so deserves. It would be such a shame if it wasn't widely seen as, for me, it is probably the movie of the year so far and will rightly take a place in my all time favourite list. I will be watching it again very soon.

I am adding to this having read some of the reviews written since I last looked. UI'm afraid I find the negative opinions ridiculous - maybe it's just you have to have imagination, intelligence and a heart to get this movie and not be a mysoginistic halfwit who doesn't understand of you fast forward through a movie, you miss most of it... sigh.

Caught this at the 75th EIFF, very clever and inventive piece of micro-budget SF, presented almost as documentary using footage discovered in old movie reel tins in a deserted house in England, purporting to document a pair of eccentric sisters created Lola, a machine which can intercept. Broadcasts from the future. It starts as fun, but as the war comes to Britain, Lola's trajectory changes radically.

Some of the film was shot on period cameras, developed in a rougher way to give the impression of damaged old film reels, while other footage uses newsreels, edited to include characters (a la Forrest Gump) or events, while the story also brings into play the nature of personal responsibility and the potential consequences of interfering with history. In many ways it reminded me of Primer, now a cult film, which I first saw at the same film festival years ago.

Lola: A cautionary tale about Time Travel; even if it just involved intercepting future Radio and TV broadcasts. Sisters Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Martha (Stefanie Martini) have always been precocious, fiddling around with valves and electrical components since they were toddlers. Martha is the ideas person/inventor, Thomasina is the engineer who creates the devices. In October 1938 they build Lola, a chronovisor, they view and listen to future TV signals. They first see Bowie playing Space Oddity but go on to view rhe future Grand Nationals and other events to make money from betting. When World War 2 begins they intercept future news to warn people about bombing raids. Eventually tracked down by Military Intelligence they aid the War effort but when you interfere with the future yiu end up with unexpected consequences and no good deed goes unpunished.

The conceit is that is found footage, a film put together by Martha from newsreels, old home films and film shot by Martha on 16 mm stock. It is wonderful in black and white, blurry at times, blacking/whiting out. Changes made to actual 1930s/40s cinenews are seamless and transforms history. Bowie references provide many in jokes and cultural references, as the girls sing and dance in the future music. An Anti-Bowie. Reggie Watson (Shaun Boylan) delivers sinister tunes in a Bowiesque style. The sisters are delightfully eccentric, even keeping a horse indoors, they live in an old crumbling manor house where they basucally raised themselves as "wild childen". Great performances by Appleton and Martini with Rory Fleck Byrne as an Intelligemce officer who falls for Martha and Aaron Monaghan as his manipulative superior. Neil Hannon provides the original soundtrack with Watson's authoritarian songs. Directed and written by Andrew Legge. 8.5/10,

I'll pass on all the comments both positive and negative about this film and address just one sci-fi issue that some reviewers either scoff at or enjoy, receiving future broadcasts.

Off air broadcasting seems to be deemed a thing of the past early television, given cable delivery streaming and the now almost defunct vcr, dvd etc.

But original tv broadcasting went out into the airwaves on a variety of variable a frequency transmissions. Any signal sent out theoretically would enter the atmosphere and conceivably pass into space.

Given travel at the speed required to "catch" those signals in space, any original broadcast from any time sent to air could be received in the future creating the ability to look back in time, not forward.

Mind boggle. Love sci-fi as it becomes reality more and more.