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Whenever young Darla Dudley screamed “Shazam!” she would transform into an adult superhero version of herself played by the beautiful Meagan Good. The actress always wanted to be a part of a proper action flick and what better to achieve this dream than by playing a superhero?

Meagan Good in Shazam! (2019) | New Line Cinema

During auditions, Meagan Good didn’t really know which film she was exactly auditioning for. All she did know was that she had to go in and pretend to be a ten-year-old girl, which was somehow her cup of tea. Of course, the actress nailed her audition and the role was hers to take but when she was told the film was Shazam! she mistook it for Shaquille O’Neal’s 1996 comedy Kazaam.

Meagan Good’s Hilarious Mix-up

Shaquille O’Neal’s Kazaam (1996) | Touchstone Pictures

Talking to Comic Book Resources, Meagan Good opened up about always wanting...

Actor Meagan Good accomplished her goal of starring in a superhero project when she was cast in the DC movie Shazam. But she was initially kept in the dark about the project when she was auditioning for the movie. Which was why she briefly confused Shazam for a cult-classic 90s superhero film.

Meagan Good once shared how she was cast in ‘Shazam’ Meagan Good | Araya Doheny/WireImage

Good’s casting in the first Shazam film may have come as a bit of a surprise. Like the movie’s titular superhero, Good’s character was ten-year-old Darla Dudley, who would gain the ability to turn into a super-powered adult. The chance to star in the superhero movie was a big step for Good, who hoped to nab an action role years prior to her casting.

“For me, again, I really wanted to get into the action space. I decided four or...

This Is Us is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed television shows of recent years.

The drama follows the lives of the Pearson family, and its talented cast has captured the hearts of audiences worldwide with its relatable and emotional storytelling.

While we’ve grown to love the Pearson family on screen, it can be easy to forget what the actors behind the roles look like and how tall they are.

The ‘This Is Us’ cast members Niles Finch, Sterling K. Brown, Mandy Moore, Susan Kelechi Watson, and Chris Sullivan at the Emmy Award Contenders Annual Nominees Night, Beverly Hills, September 2019 (Credit: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock)

Explore the Cast of ‘This Is Us’ Mandy Moore (Rebecca Pearson) Milo Ventimiglia (Jack Pearson) Jon Huertas (Miguel Rivas) Sterling K. Brown (Randall Pearson) Ron Cephas Jones (William Hill) Justin Hartley (Kevin Pearson) Caitlin Thompson (Madison Simons) Chrissy Metz (Kate Pearson) Chris Sullivan...

Payman Maadi as time-travel inventor Jabir in the sci-fi drama Aporia. Courtesy of WellGoUSA

Time-travel tales always raise logical questions about inconsistencies and effects. One of the tropes is that everything will go kablooey if your time-traveling self meets the prior one. Another is the warning to minimize interactions with those of yore to avoid collateral influences that will change their future and your present, as in the “Butterfly Effect.” Generally, films using this premise minimize our mental gymnastics by filling the screen with so much action that we don’t have time to think about the science what-ifs. The Terminator franchise exemplifies the distraction factor. The title’s definition is of internal contradictions or a logical impasse.

Aporia tries a different approach to avoid the first problem in this drama. A guy named Jabir (Payman Maadi) builds a time machine that’s not strong enough to send a person...

Since losing her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi) in a drunk-driving incident, Sophie (Judy Greer) has struggled to manage crippling grief, a full-time job, and the demands of parenting her devastated teenage daughter (Faithe Herman). When her husband’s best friend Jabir (Payman Maadi), a former physicist, reveals that he has been building a time-bending machine that could restore her former life, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice—and unforeseeable consequences.

Aporia is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital on September 12.

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Stars: Judy Greer, Edi Gathegi, Payman Maadi, Faithe Herman, Whitney Morgan Cox, Veda Cienfuegos | Written and Directed by Jared Moshé

Aporia is the second film I have watched in the last few weeks which has kind of tackled time travel but not been what most people would call a time travel movie. And that’s no bad thing. The first movie was the beautiful anime The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes. It was an excellent and interesting new take on time travel, and you can read my review for Nerdly here.

Aporia might feel a little bit more familiar – it has a slightly different take on The Butterfly Effect but it might just be as beautiful as the animated movie I have just mentioned.

The always reliable Judy Greer plays Sophie. A mother who since losing her husband (and father of their child) has struggled to be a good parent,...

Judy Greer’s iconic career has spanned from “13 Going on 30” to the revamped “Halloween” franchise, proving the actress can delicately balance comedy, horror, and even a certain flavor of signature detachment onscreen. Yet, somehow, the time travel logic of 2004’s comedy “13 Going on 30” makes more sense than the kind at hand in “Aporia,” the latest Greer vehicle that attempts to marry scraps from Greer’s recent haunting performance as a grieving mother in recent festival premiere “Eric Larue” and repurposes her masterful tears into a bland sci-fi drama that asks too many unanswered questions about morality, mortality, and the price of happiness.

Greer stars in the film as Sophie, a widowed single mother who lost her scientist husband Malcolm (Edi Gathegi) in a drunk driving accident. She is left to care for their 11-year-old daughter Riley (“This Is Us” alum Faithe Herman), with the pre-teen acting...

Have you heard of a new movie about a team of quantum physicists who build a revolutionary device that, once it’s set off, may change the course of the world forever?

In the case that you have, you’re probably not thinking of Aporia, a cleverly crafted sci-fi indie whose budget was only an infinitesimal fraction of the one used for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but whose emotional repercussions are just as palpable, if not more so at times.

Written and directed by Jared Moshé (The Ballad of Lefty Brown), the high-concept and extremely low-fi feature follows a trio of Angelenos who utilize a homemade particle accelerator to kill people in the past, causing unpredictable fallout in the present. Subtly acted and deftly scripted, if a bit generic in its execution, the Well Go USA release should find a few cult followers in theaters and a bigger audience on streaming platforms.

Normally at the top of these Don’t-Miss Indies round-ups, we like to make a little joke that’s somewhat topical. But if you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on in Hollywood for the past couple of months, you’ll know that the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are no laughing matter (unless we’re talking about the writers’ signs.) In fact, right at press time not one but two of this months featured titles have been pushed, due to strike-related issues.

And while our blog deadlines being imperiled by the inhuman machinery of Late Capitalism is certainly a headache, our real concern is the wellbeing of our filmmaking community during this lean, labor-conscious strike period. Please consider donating to artist support funds like this or this.

Shortcomings

When You Can Watch: August 4

Where You Can Watch: Theaters

Director: Randall Park

Cast: Justin H. Min,...

It’s become increasingly common to lend genre films some semblance of emotional depth by having their protagonists burdened from the start with profound grief or loss. That is especially the case with “Aporia,” producer Jared Moshe’s third feature as writer-director. Its variation on a particular kind of fantasy premise (often involving time travel) underlines the familiar wisdom of “Be careful what you wish for,” as the ability to alter tragic past events only ends up complicating the present for our main characters.

Starring Judy Greer as a recent widow in a lower-middle-class Los Angeles milieu, this is more an effective drama with a novel hook than any typically violence- or spectacle-driven dive into the fantastic— the lo-fi sci-fi on tap here requires nary a special effect. Those expecting more action or thrills may be underwhelmed. But “Aporia” (the title of which is a term for a state of...

Big concept science fiction too often neglects the human side, which is a problem, because by and large it’s humans who determine how science is used. This smart independent feature by Jared Moshé, which screened as part of Fantasia 2023, is all about human experience and the deep needs which drive our engagement with technology, its development and its destructive potential.

At the heart of it is Sophie (Judy Greer), who is at rock bottom when we first encounter her. Six months ago she lost her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi). Her devastated daughter Riley (Faithe Herman) wants nothing to do with her. She’s struggling to cope at work and everyone is running out of sympathy – everyone, that is, except for her friend Jabir (Payman Maadi). He has been there throughout to bail her out of trouble. In the process they have built up the kind of trust which makes.

What would your life be like if you didn’t go to work the day an accident would otherwise change everything? How much of your future might shift if you decide to simply alter your schedules to better accommodate picking up your child from school? One question seems bigger than the other, yet the second may actually impact what occurs next more. Because you can’t know for certain. And there aren’t any do-overs. Perhaps it’s better that way, to accept and move on rather than risk an even worse fate. Or is it?

That’s what writer-director Jared Moshé seeks to contemplate with his grounded science fiction drama Aporia. In it exists a woman named Sophie (Judy Greer) who has recently watched her life fall apart. Her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi) was the victim of a drunk-driving collision eight months prior, and the void left has all but shattered their family.

Forget Westerns: “The Ballad of Lefty Brown” director Jared Moshé is going on a whole different journey.

In “Aporia,” which world premieres at Fantasia, Sophie (Judy Greer) is trying to keep things together after her Mal husband is killed in a drunk-driving accident. Struggling to comfort teenage daughter, she makes a shocking discovery: his friend, a former physicist, has managed to build a mysterious machine.

Edi Gathegi, Faithe Herman and Payman Maadi also star.

“I like to call it a time-traveling movie that never goes back in time,” Moshé tells Variety.

“I had this idea: What if there was a gun you could shoot into the past? I didn’t want to, say, kill baby Hitler and change the entire world, but show a character who wants to regain control of her life.”

“I started writing this when I became a father. I was getting ‘The Ballad’ off the ground,...

"We have this power, why shouldn't we use it?" "It's too risky." Well Go USA has revealed an official trailer for Aporia, an indie sci-fi thriller from filmmaker Jared Moshe. It's premiering soon at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, which is why this trailer is dropping now. Opening in August to watch just after. Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage her grief, her 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. He offers her a chance to restore her previous life, but of course, this kind of attempt to change history always comes with other dangerous consequences. Judy Greer stars with Payman Maadi, plus Edi Gathegi, Faithe Herman, Whitney Morgan Cox, and Rachel Paulson. It all seems familiar, rehashing the same "you can't change the past" story in so many other time machine movies.

Grief is a complicated emotion. People say that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but what if you can go back and change the past? In today’s Aporia trailer, Judy Greer plays a mother devastated by loss who alters time and space to change the course of history. However, manipulating the laws of time is dangerous, and the results could be worse than the event you hoped to change.

In the Aporia trailer, Greer’s Sophie learns about a secret time machine built by her husband’s best friend, played by Payman Maadi. Sophie thinks she can bring her husband back after he dies in a tragic drunk-driving accident, but the consequences of her actions could lead to losing her teenage daughter or worse.

Jared Moshe directs from his own script, with Greer, Edi Gathegi, Payman Maadi, and Faithe Herman starring as the main cast.

In Moshe’s Aporia trailer,...

The chance to undo a tragedy leads to time-bending sci-fi thrills in Aporia, and a new trailer unveiled today gives a glimpse of the emotional stakes and haunting morality choices made.

Aporia stars Judy Greer as a widow grappling with impossible choices when presented with a time machine.

The dramatic sci-fi thriller will make its world premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on July 27 ahead of the film’s August 11 US theatrical release from Well Go USA.

Aporia follows “Sophie (Greer), who since losing her husband Mal (Gathegi) in a drunk-driving accident, has struggled to manage crippling grief, a full-time job, and the demands of parenting her devastated teenage daughter (Herman). When her husband’s best friend (Maadi), a former physicist, reveals he has been building a time-bending machine that could restore her former life, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice — and unforeseeable consequences, posing the question ‘If you...

Would you change the past? It’s a difficult question that one woman faces in “Aporia.” The film sees a widow confront a new form of technology, soon learning that every revelation comes with a high price. “Aporia” offers an inspection of humanity’s complex relationship with emotions while also addressing an infatuation with innovation. The project hails from writer and director Jared Moshé — he last did double duty on 2017’s Western drama “The Ballad of Lefty Brown.”

Read More: Summer 2023 Movie Preview: 52 Must-See Films To Watch

Judy Greer stars as the widow given an uneasy choice; the role expands past her comedic work with “Reboot” and “Archer.” It’s also far from her first foray into genre work — appearing in 2018’s “Halloween” as well as its sequel “Halloween Kills.” She’s joined by a host of talents from various films and series, including “The Harder They Fall” star Edi Gathegi,...

Stars: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Rachel Zegler, Djimon Hounsou, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Faithe Herman, Cooper Andrews, Marta Milans, Adam Brody, Ross Butler, Meagan Good | Written by Henry Gayden, Chris Morgan, Bill Parker | Directed by David F. Sandberg

Zachary Levi returns for a sequel to DC’s 2019 superhero hit, alongside returning director David F. Sandberg. As such, the follow-up doesn’t quite hit the heights of the first film, but there’s a decent amount of fun to be had along the way.

The plot picks up two years after the events of the previous film, with Billy Batson (Asher Angel / Levi) and his Shazam Family of teens-who-turn-into-adult-superheroes established as a team of costumed crimefighters in their city, even if they occasionally screw up, earning them the label “the Philadelphia Fiascos”. However, when the vengeful Daughters of Atlas (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu) show up,...

The 27th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is set to run from from July 20th through August 9th at the Concordia Hall Cinema in Montreal, with additional screens at the Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée – and today the festival announced the first wave of titles that will be screening there this year! The festival runners promise this edition of the show will deliver “a whiplashing program of screenings, workshops, and launch events”, with a spotlight on South Korean cinema, a Canadian trailblazer Award being presented to Larry Kent, and World Premiere screenings of new films from the likes of Larry Fessenden, Xavier Gens, Jenn Wexler, The Adams Family, and Victor Ginzburg. They’ll also be hosting the International Premieres of Tsutomu Hanabusa’s blockbusters Tokyo Revengers 2 – Part 1 & 2.

2023 marks 60 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and the Republic of Korea, so Fantasia is teaming up with the Korean...

The Fantasia Film Festival, North America’s largest genre film festival, has released the first wave of titles for its upcoming 27th edition.

There’s world premieres for Theresa Sutherland’s Lovely Dark and Deep, which features Barbarian star Georgina Campbell; Victor Ginzburg’s Empire V; Jared Moshe’s Aporia, led by Judy Greer and Faithe Herman; and Where The Devil Roams, from directors Toby Poster, John Adams and Zelda Adams, also known as The Adams Family.

Other world bows in Montreal include Xavier Gens’ Mayhem!, which stars Nassim Lyes and Olivier Gourmet; horror auteur Larry Fessenden’s Blackout; Nicholas Tomnay’s What You Wish For, with Nick Stahl playing a chef with a gambling problem and from the producers of The Florida Project; and Ryan Ward’s Daughter of the Sun.

Fantasia’s first titles includes a world premiere for Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game, the follow-up to the debut feature The Ranger,...

Exclusive: Well Go USA Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Aporia, a previously unannounced sci-fi thriller from Armian Pictures starring Judy Greer (Halloween Kills), Edi Gathegi (The Harder They Fall), Payman Maadi (A Separation) and Faithe Herman (Shazam!). The film, written and directed by Jared Moshé (The Ballad of Lefty Brown), is slated for release in theaters in August. (Check out the first still from it above.)

Aporia follows Sophie (Greer), who since losing her husband Mal (Gathegi) in a drunk-driving accident, has struggled to manage crippling grief, a full-time job, and the demands of parenting her devastated teenage daughter (Herman). When her husband’s best friend (Maadi), a former physicist, reveals he and Mal had been building a time-bending machine that could restore her former life, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice — and unforeseeable consequences.

The film is produced by Neda Armian (Rachel Getting Married) and...

Oh, to be back in March 2020.  This Is Us returns for season five this week, and before the show can catch up to the Big Three's tense 40th birthday in August, it's got to do a little backtracking to explain how the world completely flipped on its head in the time since the season four finale. E! News has an exclusive first look at a scene in which Randall's (Sterling K. Brown) family is beginning to grapple with just how serious the coronavirus pandemic is. Deja (Lyric Ross) seems to be the one who's most on top of it, even if the facts were a little iffy back then.  "My friend Daphne says if you touch your face you automatically get it," Annie (Faithe C. Herman) tells her...

While many tuned in to watch Kristen Bell‘s hilarious antics as the first-ever host of the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, People was also busy watching for everything off-camera, backstage and on the red carpet.

From run-ins between celebrity pals during commercial breaks to supportive members of the Time’s Up movement banding together, here’s what we saw that you didn’t.

On the Red Carpet

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban stopped to pose with a few fans at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, even taking the time to sign a few autographs.

Call Me By...