Primer (2004)

Sadly Over-hyped

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I find it very difficult to follow this film. Normally, I pride myself as someone who is attentive and easily understand films.

Pay no attention to the bad reviews they can't appreciate the uniqueness of this and for some reason I can't understand they expect this first time director and crew who mostly all have no experience to produce a big budget Hollywood production. Oh well their loss.. But let me explain why this movie is so good.First off Primer does not throw its plot in your face. You are essentially an outsider getting bits and pieces of information along the way just like the main characters.There is some technical jargon throughout the film that you don't really need to understand.. The only thing that you really need to understand is literally drawn out for you. The rest is fairly easy to infer from context. This film is directed by an engineer and this take on a time travel movie takes something that most time travel movies just kind of do whatever and don't explain the way it works. (think Flux capacitor was the only thing that back to the future said and you were just supposed to take it and run with it) primer doesn't do that. It actually gives you an explanation of why time travel in the movie works.. And it's so good that I bet some real engineers have messed with it after seeing this. That in itself is worth watching the movie.. Its brilliant. Because of the way the time travel works in this movie also helps develop the movie and the story falls into place. You as the viewer receive information at the same pace as the characters in the film and you understand things (or don't understand things) at the same rate they do. This is a very realistic movie and I could see real engineers handling this the exact same way as the main characters.Since this is a first time director you are not going to see a lot of fancy shot and there is no cgi or special effects. And it gives it a very nice overall feel of watching a documentary about the discovery of time travel but with better camera work than a documentary. Most of the lighting is all natural. There are no sets. The night scenes are night with enough lighting to see what you need but not so much that you are like "why are their two moons?"Primer is a journey into discovery. You get to enjoy the discovery with the characters and follow them through what unfolds. You will have some questions at the end but not much. There are guides out there that go into a lot of detail to really over explain the time line of the movie but you don't need it. Some information you might be looking for simply isn't in the film at all.. But if the information you are looking for wasn't known by the main characters.. You won't know it either (unless you are bold enough to watch with commentary... I never watch a movie with commentary.. Ever.. And I watched both director and crew commentary on this because I thoroughly enjoyed this movie way more than I thought I would.)Watch this movie.. Pay attention.. Listen.. And enjoy one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Let me preface this review by saying this film is not for everyone. This indie is frustrating and difficult to follow. And intentionally so. Shane Carruth set out to take a basic sci-fi concept and obfuscate it in nearly every aspect, but did so in order to ground it as much as possible. He complicated to simplify. The result was so aggravatingly ingenious, I felt slapped in the face. But that good slap that you think you want more of. The budget was $7,000, and that's all this man needed to play head games with me. There are some neat technical achievements here, but the central themes of Primer and the way they were impressively executed are what have my applause. 7/10 — watching Primer.

THIS REVIEW IS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN THE MOVIEI'll give this one a 4. And I'm being generous. The plot could be explained in 30 seconds. Instead, we are held captive for 80 minutes listening to two young inventors exchange pseudo-scientific, nonsensical, meaningless jargon and intentionally confusing theories and observations. I constantly wondered what their actual footprint in time was, compared to when they first started. Of course, that's what the screenwriter intended so I guess it was a success in some regard. It was a disappointment that the fruits of their labor were never shown--it would have been nice to see them succeed in one of the many investments they made. I found myself waiting for the morbid sense of gloom to be replaced with hope for the two guys. Never happened.Oh and Abe was horribly miscast. David Sullivan looked and acted like a college freshman athlete and all the seemingly intelligent mumbo jumbo was hardly believable, uttered from his lips. They should have at least cleaned him up a little bit and thrown some glasses on him.Ultimately, the psycho-babble exchanges between the two engineers becomes annoying, as you realize it's not meant to progress the story. It's only synthetically dramatic filler. In fact, I don't know who these purposeless verbal exchanges were meant to entertain: Reasonably intelligent people see right through it; and slower or uninterested people certainly couldn't take anything away from it.The movie was unsatisfying on just about every level but, it's graded on a curve and I've seen way worse.