News and updates keep coming for fans of The Bear on FX/Hulu. It was just a couple of months ago, for example, when we got word that the arrival of the hit drama’s third season is just around the corner — and now we know that filming for Season 4 will begin right on its heels. Meanwhile, Ayo Edebiri (who plays chef Sydney Adamu in The Bear, a role that’s won her a Golden Globe as well as an Emmy) also has a new movie coming out that’s already wowing critics and which, in fact, just debuted at SXSW to much fanfare.
Edebiri’s movie — Omni Loop, a time-loop film starring Mary Louise-Parker as a physicist, while Edebiri plays a quantum physics student — not only got a strong reception during the festival in Austin. It’s also debuted to a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
If you love time travel dramas with a bit of a melancholy vibe, Omni Loop is definitely one to put on your list once it gets a wide release date. Basically, Mary Louise-Parker’s character is told she has a week left to live, and she has a collection of blue pills that she keeps dipping into which send her five days into the past. In other words, she keeps re-living her final week over and over. Edebiri’s character comes into the picture to help her make sense of the limited and wonky time-travel capability that she’s harnessing.
The vibe here feels similar to that of recent movies like Linoleum, a contemplative indie gem that got a quiet release last year and stars Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seehorn in a story about regret and dreams deferred. “Sometimes, in film and in life, the greatest gifts are the ones you don’t expect yet were there all along,” a Collider review raves about Omni Loop. As the story loops back a few days into the past one more time, “you’ll wish you could run it all back again.”
Multiple chances to delay the inevitable? A pill that lets you revisit the past and do things all over again? The potential for exquisite heartache and deep, narrative profundity always abounds in time-travel dramas. Throw in actors of the caliber of Mary Louise-Parker and Ayo Edebiri, and you’ve got an easy winner on your hands.