Time-travel brainteaser of passable intellectual complexity, based on a Ray Bradbury short story (respectable s-f pedigree), and directed by Peter Hyams (Timecop, 2010, Outland, among others in the genre). The year is 2055, and a moneymaking enterprise called Time Safari arranges hunting expeditions into prehistory to gun down the same allosaurus time and time again. (Chief moneymaker: Ben Kingsley. Safari guide: Edward Burns. Radical protester: Catherine McCormack.) Every precaution has been taken to preserve and protect the course of evolution: the targeted dino was about to be inundated by lava anyway, and the bullets of ice will leave no trace. Nevertheless, the "bulletproof" plan is of course not bulletproof; and the ripple effect, when something goes wrong, comes in tsunami-sized "timewaves" of evolutionary changes: a forest primeval in futuristic Chicago, a new species of reptilian primate, and so on. But what, exactly, did go wrong? And how to set it right? The cheesiness of the special effects -- not least some rear-screen projection of Hitchcockian artificiality and antiquity -- could almost stir up nostalgia for the days when science fiction tended to be grade-Z. But the cheesy effects in themselves are somehow not as much fun in the era of CGI as in the era of handmade Halloween costumes and claymation. Maybe it's just that technological failings are less amusing than human failings. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd