Aporia

Anything related to the concept of time and I will always jump right in, notwithstanding the eventual culmination. Suffice it to say that the same morbid curiosity had brought me here in the first place.

Now, I don't regret tuning in and checking this out, but I do have qualms about the film, specifically in regard to its lacklustre writing, which couldn't take advantage of the potential it originally possessed.

The execution has turned out to be underwhelming in practically every aspect, not just from a narrative standpoint but also from a technical as well as from a performance perspective. Nothing worked; nothing substantial was achieved. It feels exceedingly bland and strikingly uninspiring.

However, the concept is good.

What if you could kill somebody in the past

• whose action kills people and turns people miserable
• whose immoral action turns people miserable
• whose simple action turns people miserable
• who simply turns you miserable

Such quandaries hold the potential to produce a fantastic film.

But we don't see their past, and how it could affect the present; instead, a different present simply emerges. It made the director and writer's job much easier, as they lack original ideas

The dialogues are considerably basic, and the scenes are even more so. Standing at the open fridge, pondering what to take out... There are so many pointless moments to fill the film.

The actors struggle with the non-adapted dialogues and non-working connections.

It's all so superficial, simplistic, almost parodying.

Wasting my time made me upset and I interrupted watching after about 10 minutes, but then I read about the topic and decided to give it a go.

It is not given a second chance.

IN A NUTSHELL: Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage grief, a full-time job, and parenting her devastated daughter, but when a former physicist reveals a secret time-bending machine, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice for a chance at happiness again.

The film was directed and written by Jared Moshe. Well done, Jared! Already, the film has been nominated for "Best Film" at the Fantasia Film Festival.

It's helpful to know that the word "aporia" means an irresolvable, internal contradiction or logical disjunction in an argument or theory (Oxford Dictionary). It's the perfect title for this film.

THINGS I LIKED: I've been a fan of Judy Greer for decades. She always gets roles as the best friend or some supporting character, so I'm happy to see her as the lead in this movie. She absolutely crushes it.

All of the cast members did a great job and include Edi Gathegi, Peyman Moaadi, and Faithe Herman.

Like a lot of films these days, this one tackles the human perspective of the multiverse. I love time travel movies and loops.

I love twists, and this movie forces you to think deeply about choices and consequences.

Most movies lately tell audiences to just do whatever makes YOU happy, with no regard for responsibility or consequences. I really like that this film explores those ideas deeper.

The color palette looked muted, which I thought was a great choice because the story takes a look at reality and alternate realities. The choices weren't always clear either.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: The mechanical contraption that the former physicists built looks ridiculous.

The film completely glosses over the daughter's reaction to how her father is now alive. How is it determined who will have memories and who will not? There are some plot holes like that, so try not to overthink the story too much.

The film moves quite slowly.

I didn't feel a lot of chemistry between the leading couple.

There was a rumor that this film is related to the Cloverfield franchise, but it's not.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: Young kids will be very bored.

Profanity and F-bombs Talk of a drunk driver who killed a man Some alcohol and cigarettes People talk about killing other people.

This was an impromptu watch, so I had no expectations for it, decided to watch it when I noticed it was playing at the cinema. It took some time for me to figure out what the storyline was gonna be like. The film was off to a poignant start, yet its impact kinda sucked due to the lack of a gradual buildup that would've given an emotional connection with the characters. Even how Sophie was persuaded to take part in the subsequent events seemed too easily/quickly done. More so, the film fell into the trope where a computer-savvy character solves all these complex calculations or hacks in mere seconds which is always hard to believe.

Despite its intention to evoke emotions, the movie failed to establish a bond between me and its characters. The sci-fi elements lacked complexity and allure, with the core concept being hastily explained and while the plot itself was decent, the narrative suffered from a lack of depth and sentiment, causing me to feel detached from both the characters and the overall cinematic experience. That coupled with how the story progressed almost mechanically from one scene to another.

It was also pretty anticlimactic and it was difficult to see how the movie was gonna play out in the end; and that's not in a nice mysterious suspenseful way, it was just dull and I was waiting for it to end. Sure, the plot twist was a pretty big one but still too little too late. The film needed a deeper emotional connection to the characters, deeper exploration of its sci-fi elements, and deeper dive into the moral dilemmas they faced. Ultimately, it was the emotional weight that the movie most needed in comparison to the latter two aspects, leaving it incomplete in the most vital part.

All time travel stories require varying degrees of suspension of disbelief. The only fully self consistent plots involve "closed loop" stories, like Predestination, but those require us to give up on the concept of free will. Some are just incredibly stupid (Looper comes to mind). On the scale of things, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure isn't all that bad.

The good thing about this movie, is that it puts the really implausible stuff right at the beginning, and once it establishes the rules, it mostly sticks to them.

Two randos build a (sort of) time machine out of what looks like a Commodore 64 and a pile of literal junk (seriously, this movie gets a solid F for prop design). Rather than send people back in time, it has one and only one capability: it allows the users to kill a specific person in the past, as long as they can locate that person at a specific time, and of course this tees up a classic morality dilemma.

This changes the present and everyone in it, but because "yada yada yada quantum mechanics", anyone in the room with the machine will remember the original timeline - and NOT have any of the memories they should have in the new timeline. This is actually an issue for a lot of time travel movies, they generally just sweep under the rug rather than confronting it outright.

They start with a pretty clear case where killing a bad person in the past will save the life of a innocent person, but it won't be a spoiler to tell you that this has unintended consequences and that their attempts to set things right will just make things worse, or at least put them further and further from their original world.

So in the end, it's a mix of the butterfly effect, the multiverse, and the Trolley Problem. In spite of some of the other reviews, I found the acting and emotions pretty good. I think it would have made a good Twilight Zone or Black Mirror Episode, but stretching it to a full length movie got a little thin.

I didn't hate the ending, but a lot of people did.