From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Aug 8 16:01:43 2001 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!luth.se!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Jerry Saravia Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Frequency (2000) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 19:49:16 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 29070 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 189653 X-RT-TitleID: 1096834 X-RT-SourceID: 875 X-RT-AuthorID: 1314 Summary: r.a.m.r. #29070 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 66 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:27257 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2916 Time-travel can be an exciting arena for the cinema because it defies all logic and pretense. After all, it does not seem feasible that we can travel backwards in time, but the very notion does bring up all kinds of strange paradoxes, as does traveling forward into the future. But then you have a film like "Frequency" which asks not so much to defy logic but to defy reason. Consider the premise of the film. You have a sullen cop named John Sullivan (Jim Caveziel) who removes an old ham radio from his closet. He plays with it and discovers one night that he can communicate with his father (Dennis Quaid). Here is the catch: John's father, a dedicated firefighter, died in a horrific blazing fire while in the line of duty. So it is John in 1999 having conversations with his dad who is alive and well in 1969! How can this be? Can it be the strange forms of lights in the night sky that are causing a break in the space-time continuum? Or, to be more radical, could it be that it is all in John's mind? Nevertheless, we are left with suspending logic temporarily since John realizes his father will die in that fire within a few days in 1969, just before the Mets play their first game in the World Series! Can John prevent his father from dying in the past? And wouldn't that rupture the space-time continuum? I am willing to suspend disbelief at the cinemas as much as everyone else, but there is something horribly wrong from the get-go. Though the story is not possible by any stretch of the imagination, in terms of just pure scientific reasoning, how could John be talking to his father from the past? Would that not be changing the future at all just based solely on that premise alone? And how can John only feel that the future has changed until his father changes the past at the approximate time that coincides with the time in the future? Why should that matter? And if everything can be erased as it is with (*SPOILER*) John's father surviving the fire, then how can John feel an alternate time line existing when no one else can? Just a matter of logic and reasoning based on the filmmaker's rules. Stephen Hawking would have a field day with all this. All paradoxes aside, the basic problem with "Frequency" is that I never believed the relationship between John and his father. Simply put, there is no chemistry between Dennis Quaid and Jim Caveziel - they do not make a fitting father-son combo. And frankly all the time paradoxes, and an implausible serial-killer plot to boot, distract from the emotional connection to the story which is simply about a father and son trying to communicate. Added to that is the lack of an explanation about Jim's girlfriend, who leaves him at the beginning, and then does not recognize him later after the past had been changed. A little nod to "It's A Wonderful Life" to be sure, but the subplot is left dangling like an unexposed wire in a time machine, and thus she is never seen or heard from again. If nothing else, it is a pleasure seeing Dennis Quaid back to his clever, sly, cocky self - sort of a grown-up version of his character in "Dreamscape." He is often like a live wire, ready to explode at any moment (the opening sequence where he survives a fire is followed by Martha Reeves' "Heatwave.") "Frequency" is too just too low on the voltage meter to follow Quaid's live-wire act. For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at faustus_08520@yahoo.com or at Faust668@aol.com ========== X-RAMR-ID: 29070 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 189653 X-RT-TitleID: 1096834 X-RT-SourceID: 875 X-RT-AuthorID: 1314 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 18 22:48:27 2003 From: John Ulmer Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Frequency (2000) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 19:30:26 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 35527 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1188308 X-RT-TitleID: 1096834 X-RT-SourceID: 1382 X-RT-AuthorID: 6769 Summary: r.a.m.r. #35527 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 106 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!news.tdcnorge.no!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7358 rec.arts.sf.reviews:636 Visit http://www.wiredonmovies.com/ for movie scripts, reviews, quotes, and more! FREQUENCY Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel Rated PG-13 for language and scary moments/violence Directed by Gregory Hoblit (not a castmember of Lord of the Rings) Written by Toby Emmerich REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER Can you imagine being able to talk to a dead loved one? What would you say, how would you react? And what if you knew how, when and where they died, and could warn them of their forecoming doom? The questions are answered in Gregory Hoblit's "Frequency," in which a young man speaks to his father thirty years into the past. The story starts with Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid), a veteran firefighter who dies in a factory fire in October, 1969. Exactly thirty years later, in 1999, his thirty-six-year-old son John (Jim Caviezel) has become a police officer, breaking a tradition of all firefighters on his father's side. One night as John is rummaging through a compartment under his stairs (he occupies the same house he grew up in), he comes across his dad's old ham radio. Out of morbid curiosity he sets it up and, eventually, manages to make it work. He clicks it on and a static voice comes across on the other end, asking John to identify himself. In the minutes that pass, John realizes he is speaking to his father on the exact same night, thirty years earlier (or thirty years later, depending on whose perspective you are taking into account). The excuse for this wonderous ability of time communication is really quite nonsense - it has to do with a solar frequency in outer space that happens to be encompassing the sky in both 1969 and 1999 - but we instantly connect with the plot. The characters seem real enough, and sometimes that is all that counts. Recalling the plot of this film on my computer makes it seem just a bit more hokey than it was when you watch it. And that's probably the sign of a good director - one who can make skeptical audiences actually believe his ludicrous plot. Through talking to his father, John is able to warn him of his death. Frank does avoid dying, but this sets off a chain event. By not dying, Frank's wife, and John's mother, who is a nurse in 1969 and 1999, was never told of her husband's death in 1969 (because he didn't die in this alternate timeline.) Therefore she never left the hospital that October night to grieve over her husband's death, and because of this, a serial killer known as the Nightingale Strangler (or something like that) ends up killing John's mother on her routine way home from the hospital, along with six other victims who were not killed in the "original" 1999. But in the current 1999, John now has all the case files of the murders, since he is a cop and has access to them, and that means he knows when and where the Nightingale Strangler will attack. So 1969 Frank starts a case of detective, scoping out the joints on the night the killer murders his victims. Frank manages to grab some fingerprints of the anonymous killer, and in a very inventive plot twist, sticks the fingerprint evidence in a bag, hides it in his house, and tells John where he hid it. John goes looking in the 1999 house, and finds the evidence, right where Frank left it hidden in 1969. A lot of the timeline theories in "Frequency" don't hold up. The movie reminds me of "Back to the Future" quite a bit, except the latter's plot makes theoretical sense and the former's does not. Take, for example, a scene where Frank, in the past, carves the words I'M STILL HERE, CHIEF into a table with a motor mechanism. John, in 1999, sees the words being carved as it happens in the past. Smoke comes out of the table as it happens and everything. But in reality, Frank would have done it thirty years ago, meaning that the table would have the words carved into it long before John sees them being carved invisibly. It's like in "BttF Part II" - when Biff gets his hands on that sports almanac, everything in the future suddenly changes. It doesn't start happening as Biff does it in real time. Confused? Me too. Also, when Frank survives his destined death because of John's warning words, John suddenly gets new memories. Since his father never died, he now gets all these memories of them together after his (Frank's) death from the original 1969. He says to Frank later that night that now he has two streams of memories - those of Frank's death and afterwards, and those of Frank living and afterwards. But somehow, everyone else does not remember Frank's death - only John. Why? Simple: There wouldn't be an interesting film without it. "Frequency" has almost as much thought put into its time changing as "BttF," but lacks the hard conviction that the "Future" movies had. They made sense, had little plot holes - or at least plot holes that could be analyzed. "Frequency" has a lot of plot holes that simply cannot be analyzed. They're just there. But this movie has some major highlights. A battle between a serial killer in 1969 and 1999 is visually and psychologically thrilling, and very ironic in execution; moments like the fingerprint evidence being hidden, though a bit shallow, are fun - and the characters and actors are superb. This might not be as deep as "Back to the Future," but I found myself lost in this film, never checking my watch for its one hour fifty minute + running time. And that's a pretty rare thing these days. Copyright, 2003, John Ulmer ========== X-RAMR-ID: 35527 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1188308 X-RT-TitleID: 1096834 X-RT-SourceID: 1382 X-RT-AuthorID: 6769