Aporia

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Cara 2nd time seeing it, first review. Great concept, certainly gives the viewer plenty to consider where morality is concerned. Acting was very good and Judy Greer was superb in her role. Highly recommend. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 08/16/23 Full Review Daniel B Pretty simple, kind of like a one trick pony. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 12/14/24 Full Review Ben D If you’re feeling “multiverse” fatigue, take heart, for this is a fresh, soft-SciFi film that puts Judy Greer in the lead of a story concerning grief, unimaginable choices, and the effects of interfering with time. Jabir (Payman Maadi), a friend of Sophie’s (Greer) late husband, Mal (Edi Gathegi) contrives to create a past-assassination machine while attempting to make a time machine. The “how, exactly?” is fuzzy and never actually shown — one of my few gripes with the movie — but the effects are monumental; with Jabir’s machine, which is a tangled, cyber-punk morass of wires and screens residing in a spare bedroom, Sophie can shoot a bullet-like force of energy into the past and kill the drunk-driver (Adam O’Byrne) before he gets behind the wheel of the car and hits her husband. This decision is far from the crux of the movie, which is much more concerned with the ever-expanding ripple effects of these decisions. Unsurprisingly, this is a power that is too tempting to shelve after only being used once. Jabir’s claim that there just aren’t people to like… discuss science with him is ludicrous. Any city and many, many towns have universities with plenty of scientists and I also discern that this movie takes place in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country. We don’t learn where Jabir is from, but I can’t imagine that his Middle Eastern homeland has men just pondering the laws of quantum physics over their morning tea. Also, this is the third movie from 2023 that contains a plot point concerning children with seizures. The final shot on the corner is excellent, even if I had to mull it over for a few to really drink it in. Judy Greer was great in a lead role. There’s just something attractive about the crude science and grounded storytelling. Aporia knew what it wanted to be and executed. Right now, my biggest surprise of 2023 with The Artifice Girl. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 11/14/24 Full Review Tomasz P The biggest problem in such films—the issue of cause and effect, specifically why the characters remember the timeline from before the changes they make—is cleverly resolved here. It holds together thanks to a reference to an authentic theory in physics: the observer effect, where the very act of observation influences changes in the observed system. A famous example is the experiment where light changes from a wave to a photon when an attempt is made to determine whether it is a wave or a photon, as seen in quantum mechanics in the double-slit experiment. Physicists have discovered that observing quantum phenomena with a detector or instrument can alter the measured results of this experiment. While the observer effect in the double-slit experiment is caused by the presence of an electronic detector, some interpret the results as suggesting that a conscious mind can directly influence reality. Schrödinger's famous thought experiment with the cat explains this further. The scriptwriters referenced both examples. This is a low-budget production, which forced the creators to make some significant simplifications -things that would be completely impossible to achieve in reality in the way they are portrayed in the film. First of all, the era of lone inventors has long passed. The level of complexity in modern science requires years of collaboration among large teams. Secondly you can't build a particle accelerator in a bedroom -all existing particle accelerators have diameters measured in kilometers, require enormous amounts of power, and need strong shielding, which is why they are buried deep underground! We have an unintended comedic effect in the scene where one of the characters tries to expands power of the device, and we see the parts he's ordered - a trailer full of old home appliances, like old washing machines and dishwashers. If a breakthrough in physics could be achieved using a pile of junk, we'd be flying to other galaxies on parts from old refrigerators! But of course, this movie isn't about scientific realism; it's a story of difficult moral choices and the consequences of those tough decisions. It's about whether the greater good can ever justify killing an individual, about how greatly we can misjudge another person, and how easily we oversimplify our perception of others when it suits us. The writers ask whether our own personal well-being gives us the right to pass judgment on others. They question how much we truly need to know about someone in order to judge them fairly. This film is an excellent candidate for a higher-budget production. It features several plot twists that are genuinely surprising, which is rare these days! Additionally, it's not based on a superhero comic, which is a refreshing break from the colorful pulp, all those sequels and prequels produced by Marvel and similar studios. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/28/24 Full Review AURAL F This movie has a definitive existential aspect to it. If we created a device to transcend time, should we actually use it? If we choose to do so, what is the detriments that could arise from it? For there is no doubt of a cause and effect. Does the evitable effect outweigh the initial cause? We all want to change the world in some way but, should what is and was, be just that? I just want to add, yes there are some holes and there is the mellow drama but, it still asks those hypotheticals. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 04/17/24 Full Review Pasquale u I enjoyed it. Some choices could have been made once they knew the concept of who stayed in became the observers would have saved their main problem. The ending left me annoyed. Overall a good watch. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 04/09/24 Full Review Read all reviews

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