
            In 1893 London, England, popular writer Herbert George "H.G." Wells (Malcolm McDowell) displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests. After explaining how it works (including a "non-return key" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a "vaporizing equalizer" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms), police constables arrive at the house searching for the serial killer Jack the Ripper. One finds a bag, with blood-stained gloves, belonging to one of Herbert's friends, a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), whom they are unable to locate in the house, concluding that Stevenson might be the infamous killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.Stevenson has escaped to the future, but because he does not have the "non-return" key, it automatically returns to 1893. Herbert uses it to pursue Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine has ended up on display at a museum in San Francisco realizing that due to the machine traveling backwards by the geographic longitide and latitude, the machine had ended up in the unfamiliar USA. As Herbert walks around the city, he is deeply shocked by the future, having expected it to be an enlightened socialist utopia, only to find chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a worldwide history of war, crime and bloodshed.Searching numerous banks for Stevenson - he believes an Englishman might need to exchange old currency - Herbert meets liberated Chartered Bank of London employee Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen). She directs Herbert to the Hyatt Regency hotel, as she previously had Stevenson.Confronted in his room by his onetime friend Herbert, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society to be pleasingly violent. Apologetically, he states: "Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Now... I'm an amateur." Herbert demands he return with him to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson, who without the "return key" would be unable to prevent the machine from automatically returning (and thereby blocking Herbert from any further pursuit), attempts to wrest it from him. Their struggle is interrupted by a hotel employees and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase on foot. Herbert follows him to the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room and mistakenly gets the impression that Stevenson had died from his injuries.Herbert meets up with Amy Robbins again and she is the aggressor in a romance (succeeding, once Herbert is sure that she is in earnest). Stevenson returns to the bank to exchange more money. Rightly concluding that it was Amy who had led Herbert to him, he finds out where she lives. Herbert, hoping to convince her of the truth, takes a highly skeptical Amy three days into the future. Once there, she is aghast to see a newspaper headline revealing her own murder as the Ripper's fifth victim (a temporal paradox).Herbert persuades her that they must go back - it is their duty to attempt to prevent the fourth victim's murder, then prevent Amy's. However, they are delayed upon their return to the present and can do no more than phone the police. Stevenson kills again, and Herbert is arrested because of his knowledge of the killing. Amy is left alone, totally defenseless, and at the mercy of the "San Francisco Ripper."At the police station, Herbert unsuccessfully tries to convince the police of Amy's peril (his claim to be "Sherlock Holmes" has marked him as a lunatic well before mentioning a "time machine"). At the same time, Amy attempts to hide from Stevenson. When the police finally do investigate her apartment, they find the dismembered body of a woman. Since he was in custody at the time Herbert is released having been cleared as a suspect. As Herbert wonders the dark streets mourning Amy's brutal death, he is suddenly confronted by Stevenson, who has actually killed Amy's co-worker Carol, who had accepted an invitation for dinner and to meet Wells. Stevenson then kidnapped Amy in order to extort the time machine key from Wells.Stevenson flees with the key - and Amy as insurance - to attempt a permanent escape in the time machine. Herbert gives chase in a car (despite not driving very well while Stevenson forces Amy to drive her car at gunpoint). Breaking into the museum, Herbert bargains for Amy's life, she is able to escape. As Stevenson starts up the time machine with the key, Herbert removes the "vaporizing equalizer" from the machine and Stevenson nods in understanding. The removal of this component, Herbert had confirmed earlier, causes the machine to remain in place while its passenger is sent traveling endlessly through time, with no way to stop; in effect sending him to oblivion.Herbert proclaims that the time has come to return to his own time, by himself, in order to destroy a machine that is too dangerous for primitive mankind. Amy pleads with him to take her along (despite her aversion to living in Victorian England). As they depart back to the past, she says that she is changing her name to Susan B. Anthony. The end credits reveal that the two later married.
    

Time After Time


            Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is a prostitute in New York City who aspires to be a model/actress. Along with Jane McKenna and Arlyn Page, she used to work for pimp Frank Ligourin (Roy Scheider). Bree quits working full-time as a prostitute after a serious encounter with a violent customer.The movie opens with Tom Gruneman and his wife hosting a social gathering at their house in Tuscarora, Pennsylvania. Their guests include Tom's colleague Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) and Tom's friend/policeman John Klute (Donald Sutherland).Soon after, Tom Gruneman disappears without a trace and the police perform an investigation. They find an obscene letter to Bree Daniels at Gruneman's office in his desk. Daniels is contacted and she confirms that she had received several such letters but does not recognize Tom when shown a photograph. Daniels is arrested for prostitution. When released, she severs her relationship with Ligourin and begins to freelance and make her own contacts with customers. She leaves Park Avenue and moves into a small apartment and begins to worry that someone is following her.After six months of investigating Tom Gruneman's disappearance, the Police are at a dead end. Peter Cable hires John Klute to go to New York City and continue the investigation.Klute moves into a basement apartment in the same building where Daniels lives. He taps her telephone and records her telephone conversations. He then contacts Daniels and asks for her help in solving Gruneman's disappearance. Although initially reluctant, Daniels eventually cooperates with the persistent Klute who provides her protection from whomever is stalking her. Bree tries to manipulate Klute using sex but eventually she actually comes to care for him when he helps her get away from her former pimp.Klute learns that Jane McKenna (one of Frank Ligourin's former prostitutes at the time Bree was with him) apparently committed suicide. Then Aryln Page, another prostitute from Bree's past, whom Klute tracks down and also fails to recognize Tom's picture, is subsequently found dead.As Klute's investigation continues, it becomes evident that:
(1) The same man mistreated Bree Daniels and the other two prostitutes of Frank Ligourin;
(2) The man used Tom Gruneman's name when he was with the prostitutes;
(3) The man murdered Jane McKenna and Arlyn Page and probably Tom Gruneman
Klute eventually investigates Tom's friends and identifies Peter Cable based on the typewriter used to type the obscene letters and his writing style and consistent typing errors.The killer is not a mystery to viewers as Peter Cable is shown several times throughout the movie listening to tapes he had recorded of the sexual encounters and murders on a small tape recorder.
It is unclear why Cable thought it necessary to try to frame Gruneman (by planting the letter to Daniels in Gruneman's desk) or why Cable hired Klute to continue the investigation when the police had come to a dead end.Cable follows and attempts to kill Daniels, but Klute arrives just in time to save Daniels and Cable falls out the window to his death.Daniels moves out of her apartment to go with Klute who she has fallen in love with although she doubts she will be able to convert to a domestic life.
    

Klute


            John Shaft, a private detective living in New York City, is informed that some gangsters are looking for him. Police Lt. Vic Androzzi meets Shaft and unsuccessfully tries to get information from him on the two gangsters. After Androzzi leaves, Shaft spots one of the men waiting for him in his office building. He commandeers the first gangster, forcing him into his office where the second gangster is waiting. After a quick fight, Shaft dodges one of them who goes out the window, while the other surrenders and reveals to him that Bumpy Jonas, the leader of a Harlem-based organized crime family, wanted Shaft brought uptown to Harlem for a meeting.At the police station, Shaft lies to Lt. Androzzi and the detective assigned to the second gangster's death at Shaft's office, by saying that his friend was in an "accident". He is allowed to return to the streets for 48 hours before the police decide to question him again. Shaft arranges a meeting with Bumpy, the leader of these gangsters, in his office. It turns out Bumpy's daughter has been kidnapped, and Shaft is asked to ensure her safe return.After tracking down Ben Buford as Bumpy suggested, a big shoot out ensues; Shaft is told by Vic after the shooting that Shaft himself, and not Ben, was the target, and that tensions brewing between the uptown hoods belonging to Bumpy Jonas and the downtown Mafiosi have culminated in a couple of murders. But the perception is black against white to the general public, with the possibility of an escalation into full-blown race war on the streets of the city. He also shows Shaft some pictures of two of the Mafia men who just arrived in New York. Vic begs Shaft to explain what's going on, although Vic already knew Bumpy was looking for Shaft.Streetwise, Shaft surmises that mobsters are watching his pad from a local bar. Shaft pretends to be a barkeep and calls the police to have the mobsters arrested. Shaft later goes to the police station to set a meeting to find where Bumpy's daughter is being held captive.Vic tells Shaft that the room that he was in at the station house was bugged and he is supposed to bring him in for questioning, but instead leaves. Ben and Shaft go to the apartment where Marcy Jonas is being held to make sure she's alive. Once there, a gunfight ensues during which two hoods get killed and Shaft takes a bullet in the shoulder.Shaft goes home and receives medical attention from a doctor working underground with him. Shaft tells Ben to round up his men and meet him at the hotel where Marcy has been taken, to prepare to get her back. He also calls Bumpy to tell him his daughter is fine and he is going to need some taxicabs to meet him at the hotel for the getaway.Shaft's plan resembles a military commando-style operation. That evening, Ben's men all dress as hotel workers to avoid arousing suspicion. Shaft and one of Ben's men go to the roof and prepare to enter the room where Marcy is being held captive. Shaft's plan is to cause a distraction with an explosive thrown through the window of Marcy's room while Ben and his men come down the hall and deal with the Mafia men as they leave their rooms.The rescue plan is successful. Marcy is spirited out of the hotel into one of the waiting taxicabs. As the others get away in the remaining cabs, Shaft walks to a phone booth to call Vic. Shaft informs Vic as a result of the rescue there will be a huge mess to fix between the uptown crew and the mob in the near future. Vic says to close it for him, meaning he wants Shaft to fix the trouble. Shaft replies, "You're gonna have to close it yourself shitty" then hangs up the phone as he walks away laughing.
    

Shaft


            
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Charles Cioffi

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