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Ratings4.2K
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi's rating
Reviews319
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi's rating
AMBER ALERT gives a vicarious experience for something that could realistically happen to any of us:
you sight a car matching an Amber Alert; what would you do?
Would you just call the police and leave it at that, or would you try to do more?
Most people would probably just alert the authorities and then go their own way, but if the protagonists did that, there would obviously be no movie.
There are several things I liked about this film: the originality and realism of the setup; how initially small decision like tailing the suspect from the distance lead to bigger decisions down the road, so that before long, the protagonists end up doing something they would have never agreed to doing at the outset; the prolonged sense of mystery, keeping alternate possibilities requiring drastically different decisions alive as long as possible; finally, a lesson about the consequences of one's actions.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws, too: a significant portion of the dialogue is yelled, which suggests to me that the dialogue was improvised, there could have been a dose of humor, and the protagonists were not as likable as they should have been, straddling the border of being annoying. Without these flaws, this would have been a great found footage movie.
I enjoy Found footage movies most when they manage to help me immerse myself in the movie's world and vicariously explore a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This film did that.
AMBER ALERT is not for people who let difficult characters ruin their viewing experience, or for those who hate found footage movies, but others will find this probably to be interesting and enjoyable.
you sight a car matching an Amber Alert; what would you do?
Would you just call the police and leave it at that, or would you try to do more?
Most people would probably just alert the authorities and then go their own way, but if the protagonists did that, there would obviously be no movie.
There are several things I liked about this film: the originality and realism of the setup; how initially small decision like tailing the suspect from the distance lead to bigger decisions down the road, so that before long, the protagonists end up doing something they would have never agreed to doing at the outset; the prolonged sense of mystery, keeping alternate possibilities requiring drastically different decisions alive as long as possible; finally, a lesson about the consequences of one's actions.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws, too: a significant portion of the dialogue is yelled, which suggests to me that the dialogue was improvised, there could have been a dose of humor, and the protagonists were not as likable as they should have been, straddling the border of being annoying. Without these flaws, this would have been a great found footage movie.
I enjoy Found footage movies most when they manage to help me immerse myself in the movie's world and vicariously explore a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This film did that.
AMBER ALERT is not for people who let difficult characters ruin their viewing experience, or for those who hate found footage movies, but others will find this probably to be interesting and enjoyable.
I just finished watching ENCOUNTER (2021) and found it to be a pretty good drama-thriller. Since I had not heard of its director, Michael Pearce, I checked on some of his other works on IMDb. I noticed that he has several short movies which are rated under 2, an unusually low rating on this site. This made me curious enough to watch one of them.
In STRANGER, a young man and woman are frolicking outside by a meadow, passed by a stranger. Soon it becomes apparent that the woman is actually blind, and an unexpected tragedy befalls them...
There is not a single word spoken in this short, and the ending is somewhat open. Perhaps people thought that this was too pretentious, but I did not. The moment of the life-altering event is actually delivered quite effectively using the audio, and contributes to a growing sense of unease.
I do not understand how anyone could give this such low ratings. It has an original idea, it achieves what it sets out to do, and while it may not be among the very best that short film has to offer, it is not bad. The IMDb rating of 1.7 at this time is entirely unreasonable.
In STRANGER, a young man and woman are frolicking outside by a meadow, passed by a stranger. Soon it becomes apparent that the woman is actually blind, and an unexpected tragedy befalls them...
There is not a single word spoken in this short, and the ending is somewhat open. Perhaps people thought that this was too pretentious, but I did not. The moment of the life-altering event is actually delivered quite effectively using the audio, and contributes to a growing sense of unease.
I do not understand how anyone could give this such low ratings. It has an original idea, it achieves what it sets out to do, and while it may not be among the very best that short film has to offer, it is not bad. The IMDb rating of 1.7 at this time is entirely unreasonable.
COSMOS joins a small but eclectic group of excellent movies which give an emphatically realistic account of how a first encounter with an extraterrestrial lifeform might play out. These include CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), CONTACT (1996), ARRIVAL (2016), and if we include a story set in the future, EUROPA REPORT (2013).
All of these are well worth watching, but what makes COSMOS stand out is that whereas the others all had sizeable budgets, this one was made with no financial backing while seemingly sacrificing no production quality. To accomplish this, the brother duo of film-makers, Elliot and Zander Weaver, either used pre-owned equipment, borrowed it or rigged creative solutions to achieve the desired result. They also employed a small cast, took on virtually all crew tasks except for composing, got Mom to help and used basically a single location.
It did take 5 years to make it, and there are no spectacular CGI effects, but the cinematography and production values are every bit as good as with a movie with a seven- or even eight-digit budget. It is truly an impressive achievement.
But even setting the no-budget considerations aside, this is an excellent hard science fiction movie.
As a physicist, I appreciated how well it captured how real-world science works: there are long periods where nothing truly exciting happens but during which one must still pay just as much attention to everything and work just as hard as any other time, enlivened only by the camaraderie with one's peers.
Very occasionally, something exciting happens, and if it is confirmed that one has made a genuine discovery, that one is the very first person in the history of all of humankind to find out that particular thing, then it more than makes up for the mundane proceedings at other times.
The first hour or so captures the mundaneness of regular science, enlivened by a sense of camaraderie. Notably, the movie does not dumb down what the scientists are doing. Because of this and the slow pace, I can imagine that some people might be turned off, especially if they don't have a good idea of how science is carried out in real life. But those who persist will be rewarded in the second half.
During the second hour, as it becomes increasingly clear that a small team of scientists might have made a major discovery, the film kicks into high gear and adds a heavy dose of suspense. The suspense is not generated by entirely realistic means, but it is easy to forgive this in light of the movie's overall realism.
The cinematography is simply a pleasure to behold, full of atmospheric shots, and the plot injects a good dose of humanity into what could have easily become an emotionally sterile story.
Most impressively, the movie truly manages to capture the sense of excitement such a discovery might produce, not only for the discoverers, but for all of us. This is an inspired work of film-making.
All of these are well worth watching, but what makes COSMOS stand out is that whereas the others all had sizeable budgets, this one was made with no financial backing while seemingly sacrificing no production quality. To accomplish this, the brother duo of film-makers, Elliot and Zander Weaver, either used pre-owned equipment, borrowed it or rigged creative solutions to achieve the desired result. They also employed a small cast, took on virtually all crew tasks except for composing, got Mom to help and used basically a single location.
It did take 5 years to make it, and there are no spectacular CGI effects, but the cinematography and production values are every bit as good as with a movie with a seven- or even eight-digit budget. It is truly an impressive achievement.
But even setting the no-budget considerations aside, this is an excellent hard science fiction movie.
As a physicist, I appreciated how well it captured how real-world science works: there are long periods where nothing truly exciting happens but during which one must still pay just as much attention to everything and work just as hard as any other time, enlivened only by the camaraderie with one's peers.
Very occasionally, something exciting happens, and if it is confirmed that one has made a genuine discovery, that one is the very first person in the history of all of humankind to find out that particular thing, then it more than makes up for the mundane proceedings at other times.
The first hour or so captures the mundaneness of regular science, enlivened by a sense of camaraderie. Notably, the movie does not dumb down what the scientists are doing. Because of this and the slow pace, I can imagine that some people might be turned off, especially if they don't have a good idea of how science is carried out in real life. But those who persist will be rewarded in the second half.
During the second hour, as it becomes increasingly clear that a small team of scientists might have made a major discovery, the film kicks into high gear and adds a heavy dose of suspense. The suspense is not generated by entirely realistic means, but it is easy to forgive this in light of the movie's overall realism.
The cinematography is simply a pleasure to behold, full of atmospheric shots, and the plot injects a good dose of humanity into what could have easily become an emotionally sterile story.
Most impressively, the movie truly manages to capture the sense of excitement such a discovery might produce, not only for the discoverers, but for all of us. This is an inspired work of film-making.