Omni Loop

I am such a sucker for a good sci-fi movie especially when it involves time travel. The setup and conundrum you get within the first 10 minutes. You only have to listen to the doctor giving Zoya her prognosis to understand that we are going to be stretching reality a little bit so enjoy the ride. The use of the Groundhog Day time travel concept is not original. The use of it to save a life is not original. The message that it presents about parenthood and the choices one makes along the road of life however are wholly its own. Beautiful storytelling and the characters are well rounded and multi dimensional. As a fan of fantasy storytelling mixed with sci-fi tropes I loved it and recommend it wholeheartedly.

'Omni Loop (2024)' is a low-key sci-fi dramedy about a dying woman who decides to finally try and reverse-engineer the time-travel pills she found as a child that have been allowing her to relive her final week over and over and over again. Despite the best efforts of Mary Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri, both of whom are undeniably charming in this, the flick just feels ever-so-slightly flat. It's never quite as moving or profound as it's clearly trying to be, nor is it as funny or disarming as its mildly idiosyncratic and notably dry sense of humour initially indicates it will be. It all just plays out in a single, relatively uninspiring register. Still, it's never anything less than interesting and it's entertaining enough to keep you watching for its duration. While I can see why some people would find its end point disappointing, I personally feel that it's the only destination the affair ever even contemplated arriving at. As relatively minor as the experience is, it still feels like it's exactly what its creators intended it to be. I'm tempted to rate it higher because it is enjoyable in the moment, but it's undeniably a tiny bit underwhelming overall and I doubt it's going to stay with me for very long. Still, it's a solid effort that makes good use of its budget and cast to keep you engaged for its duration. It isn't great, but it's good enough for what it is.

In Miami, the physicist Zoya Lowe (Mary-Louise Parker) is terminal with a black hole on her chest. She has only one-week life and her husband Donald (Carlos Jacott), her daughter Jayne (Hannah Pearl Utt) and Jayne's fiancée Morris (Chris Witaske) bring her home to spend her last days comfortably with her family. However, when Zoya bleeds indicating that she will die, she goes to the bathroom and swallows one mysterious pill that she found when she was twelve and returns five days back in her life. Now Zoya wants to research how she could return further and make others choices in life. When she meets the graduation student Paula (Ayo Edebiri), she teams up with her to analyze the pill for several five days but goes nowhere. But when she goes to Princeton to meet her former brilliant university mate Mark (Eddie Cahill) and his son later, she reflects on her life and concludes she has made her best alternative.

"Omni Loop" (2024) is a melancholic sci-fi, developed in slow pace and very dramatic. Mary-Louise Parker is a great actress, but it is sad to see her injected with Botox in her face the way she is. The plot is good, and Zoya Lowe sees that an alternate life should not be what she is looking for. Another excellent point is the soundtrack by the Brazilian Taiguara singing "Viagem", written and composed by him. Taiguara was born in Montevideo, Uruguay during a tour of his parents but grew up in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and was exiled in London, Spain, Paris and Afrikan countries during the Brazilian military dictatorship. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

Excellent and often strange look into our human lives and how time impacts them, the fear of death, and what is worth spending our time doing.

There's a slew of films lately that seem to be exploring motherhood in a smart SciFi manner. This is one of them. Mary Louise is a mom who is at the end of her life questioning what was life's meaning. There the movie takes a heavy magical SciFi tone that is more dedicated to symbolizing our struggles with significance than saying anything scientifically significant.

This is a great framing device and gimmick. Everyone seems to be handling the script well and it keeps a sort of charming patter as we discover why motherhood is the purest form of immortality.

Solid movie worth the suspension of disbelief to watch.

First off, let me give an honest up front detail about my review process: This film is really a 7.5 to me, but i rounded up instead of down like i usually do, because i feel this movie is trapped between a rock and a hard place.

This is NOT an action, or adventure film, at all, like most big Sci-fi. Kinda barely even a sci-fi film, I prefer to call it Speculative Fiction, but most of all its a drama, while also not being exactly what that implies. This movie isn't a "Family drama" but it does focus in on familial bonds, its definitely not a comedy, but it stars relatable comic actors who inject a bit of levity into the situations. Its not any of those genres But it has elements of them all. (except, to be clear, action and adventure).

To me this belongs in a genre I really love that I'm calling "Meta-Modern Speculative Fiction", and the easiest comparison is basically ALL the films of Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche NY, Being John Malkovich), but others that I've loved are: Visioneers, Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, Sorry to Bother You, The Lobster, Poor Things, Get Out, Nope and the Tv Shows Legion, The Last Man on Earth, Maniac, I am a Virgo, and Devs. I could list a ton more but im getting away from the point.

All this type of media tends to take a Speculative fiction concept, usually with some surreal mystery/thriller element, and apply those to a character drama, with a philosophical and/or psychosocial tone. They tend to defy genre convention by combining Elements of those genres and others, and an often wildly oscillating emotional undertone, conjuring disparate negative and positive associations along the way.

In this case its mostly a time travel character drama, a little mystery thriller, and a peppering of other momentary vibes. It obviously shares a lot of tropes with Groundhog day but it tackles those in a totally different way that fans of Time Travel narratives will appreciate because it compresses a lot of the classic moments with clever editing techniques that fans of film editing will also love.

Give it a watch if that sounds good, and if you already but you were expecting a different movie, please don't rate it poorly because it didn't match expectation, a lot of people like me want to see movies like this, and when the weirder movies tend to get downvoted due to being misunderstood it just gets tougher to find and support films like this.