Primer

We all agree that Dracula 3000 is the worst movie ever made. Why can't we agree on Primer? Suffering through this horrible movie made me angry. Then I watched the director's commentary. Seven thousand dollars and a home computer. My anger turned to sympathy. But as writer/director Shane Carruth droned on, I could see he thought he had made an important film. With a message to boot. Pretentiousness. My anger returned. Reviewers on this site have said they'll watch Primer numerous times to figure out the plot. Good luck. Independent films may be limited by budget, but scripts cost nothing. How can a person devote so much time and energy to a bad script that is flawed from the get-go? Can you remember one line of dialogue? Would two guys holed up in a hotel room pass a football around? What's with the identical frat brother ties, shirts and sweaters? Would even a geek saw off his catalytic converter in a white shirt and tie and come away spotless? Was Autozone closed? They have a nighttime talk at a noisy water fountain - and bring flashlights! Aaron shows Abe his double, but Aaron's in the box. Are there three Aarons? Why does Abe kill Aaron? They discuss getting on an airplane, but do so in the airport terminal as if that's the first and only place to talk about it. Independent films should get our support. Save it for something deserving.

I don't mind a movie that doesn't spend a lot of money on itself. But this piece of "I'm a movie maker, you're too stupid to understand it" should never have made it even to DVD. After 10 minutes of trying to understand what the wooden non-actors were saying, I decided that it would be better not to suffer any more. Maybe the writer, actor, director was satisfied with his output. But it might be better for the film industry if he decided to do something more in keeping with his ability. And judged by his efforts in this film, he really doesn't have any. Don't be fooled by "This is an amateur film made on a shoe-string budget." It is a bore and definitely not worth watching.

Two entrepreneurs inadvertently invent a time travel device and then use it to change history again and again and again. Meanwhile some bad things happen, but its not really clear what or why. The director / producer / scriptwriter appeared after the film showed at the Seattle International Film Festival and told us the whole thing made sense. I'd have to take his word for it. Maybe if I could buy it on DVD and spend a weekend - or a semester - rewatching it, it would make sense. The d/p/s said he deleted a scene from the end of the film in which the characters explained what happened to each other, but he took it out because the film should make the viewers think. However, a film should make the viewers think about the issues raised in it, not about what happened. Momento made me think. Primer just made me annoyed.

Yes, there is a chance that you will NOT like this movie. That's because it is not a movie made for the majority of paying cinema goers, but it is a movie made for the sake of movie making. It is an ORIGINAL movie, so if you want something that you are used to see and expect beginning and ending in a specific way don't go watching this one. Now, about the movie: it is low budget, but the money was well spent. The plot is confusing, but good, and it does need you to watch the last 30 minutes again in order to be understood. The acting is good, even if the roles are nothing demanding. The idea is very interesting and makes you think "outside the box" :) You will see what I mean after you watch the movie. I won't waste your time telling you what it is about, just watch it and if you don't like it, at least you will have gained another perspective on movie making. For me this is a keeper: burn, CD, burn!

For much of the film I sat watching open-mouthed, half smiling at the film for reasons I am still trying to understand. Perhaps it was the fearless choice to stick to its own voice, to avoid watering it down by appealing to the wider audience. Perhaps I was amazed at the economy of this film (not just the reported budget, either); at how it so effortlessly dances around the pitfalls inherent with this almost universally misplayed genre. What an interesting film! There's a breathtakingly light touch with details and subtlety. In fact the film contains and is defined by many aspects deliberately avoided in "sci-fi movies", namely, the surface banality inherent in much of engineering or innovation. In the real world this is characterized simply by hard work, testing and analysis and not visually dynamic at every turn. How they've made this aspect fascinating is a testament to the well-tuned ear and eye of the filmmaker. Listening to these characters talk, you feel relieved that there is none of the nonsense typically associated with sci-fi films: no buxom models or chisel-faced bodybuilders arguing passionately about trivialities while secretly accomplished in physics. This is intelligent fiction about real people engaged in science and engineering who stumble onto something extraordinary. Perhaps thats why it feels so fresh. It also has a smart and (arguably) well thought out take on the nature of how this invention can impact one's ability to function and reason.(I'll avoid spoilers, not that it will help much...). I liked the film immensely and would recommend it.

"Primer" starts out innocently like a "Start-up.com" docu-drama and the first part covers some of those same financial, friendship and entrepreneurial issues as computer geek engineers work out of of one of the partner's garage to perfect an invention. But gradually, in this antiseptic atmosphere of white shirts, electrical experiments and tweaking mechanics, every human emotion, virtually as every seven deadly sin, except sloth, and beyond, starting with greed, takes them over. Without any explanation to the audience, we gradually figure out that we're seeing a cleverer, low budget "Paycheck" or what "Ground Hog Day" played for laughs and an original "Outer Limits" episode did for irony (I didn't see "The Butterfly Effect" to see how it also dealt with time changes). Rather this is an attempt to seriously examine the philosophical issues of chaos theory and how inventions can't be divorced from human frailties, both mental and physical. Shane Carruth, as the lead actor/writer/director/producer is a true auteur--and could therefore give his nerd a wife and kid-- but perhaps an outside editor could have helped make the permutations a bit clearer as I didn't quite follow the intersections with outside characters. I followed enough to get caught up in the anxiety and suspense of each iteration. It was amusing that I was the only woman in the audience.

Four engineers invent a time machine by accident. Two of the guys decide to use the machine to go back in time to make money on the stock market. But as the dangers of time traveling become more apparent, they decide to quit their endeavors and make a final trip back to prevent the machine from ever being deployed. The film is praised for being made on practically no budget and for the use of a deliberately obfuscated plot. Both ruining any entertainment value the film may have provided had this not been the case. Apart from the tedious framing and bad lighting, the sound recording was so poor one might not even have noticed the rambling, arcane script. To make matters worse no professional actors were hired making it impossible to take any of it seriously as characters were constantly mumbling over each other's lines. Sub plots are left unresolved almost as a rule and side characters just pop in and out of existence like electrons at the LHC. There is absolutely nothing about this movie that warrants praise of any kind. There's a reason why films have higher budgets than what was put on the table to create this nonsense.

I have a degree in physics and a serious addiction to great film, so I was expecting a lot from this film; I bought the DVD, rather than rent it. I watched this film four times in an attempt to understand it. It goes from superconductivity to weevils to time travel. The science didn't hold water ... and neither did the plot. Then I listened to the director's commentary and learned that the film was made by amateurs. I'm still baffled by the popularity of this film. Many people compare it to "Pi". "Pi" is a great film; "Primer" is not. The moral of the story: Rent a DVD before you buy it. I'm willing to give my copy to anyone who wants it. Email me at david_samuel_vardy@hotmail.com

A group of young scientists work at a frantic pace to invent they are not quite sure what, but their efforts start demonstrating interesting side effects. From their work in a small cottage industry of error checking devices they are forced to confront the fact that they have discovered something too valuable to market. As they explore the potential of their machine, they are caught in a frantic loop to second guess themselves. Science fiction in the cinema has largely been dominated by the visual impact, and so this is a welcome (for some) return to the world of ideas. This is not an easy-rise entertainment film but one where you have to concentrate to keep up, working out the logical implications of what's happening. If made on the scale of Men in Black or the Matrix it would descend to the level of spoof – as it is we follow the two main characters knowing that their actions are having momentous effects on the world around them and on themselves. Instead of flashy graphics, we are left to keep the ramifications of the story in mind as the characters themselves grapple with what they know is happening but can't even let themselves look at directly.

Here's the gist of it: as another review has said, 'the script is riddled with problems, about 60% of the movie is out of focus, the audio is muffled and garbled, and continuity problems abound'. All these things are true. Yet despite all appearances, this does not amount to a bad movie. It just makes Primer a exquisitely different movie, and furthermore, a movie that works. The reason to love it is that it's utterly defiant of the expectations of the traditional movie experience. It can't resort to a beautiful cast, shiny special effects, gorgeous scenery. Indeed, the cast is wooden in its acting, which turns out to work because that's how normal scientists and engineers (and people in general) are, flawed communicators. The settings are drab, out of focus, rushed and cheap, which turns out to work because that's what being efficient with your resources means for an inventor. It doesn't matter if the makers of Primer were forced into this style by their budget (as opposed to consciously 'pulling off' this look and feel). All that matters is that in the end, it turns out to work beautifully with the plot and the story. What this means is that it has nothing to go on except its wits. And wits it does have. This is not to say that it's coherent… you will be confused by the fact that the plot doesn't nicely clean up after itself. There is no nice take-home message, no all-knowing schemework. But it is an intellectually respectable, honest attempt at dealing with the paradoxes of time travel. I've never seen any major flick that throws up its hands in the complexity of it all and just admits there's only so far you can look into things – most movies you'll see gloss over the issues with some bad science, or worse, simply don't ask the questions. It's entertainment that's intellectually honest and respectable, and that's a tremendously rare thing. 9/10