Hopefully this will be the first of many installments. I'd like to create a regular feature or two for this blog along with the random posts on random topics. Mostly because. But also because the few folks who read the blog might appreciate it. So here we go.
Primer is not a long movie. It is not an expensive movie. It is not an exciting movie. It is not even, really, a well-acted movie. Despite all this, however, it is a very good movie.
Primer is a low-budget, independent film that is driven by dialogue and characters that slowly builds suspense and tension to the climactic final moments. It is unabashedly cerebral and demanding. It is complex; if you only pay half-attention or get up for a snack and miss a few minutes, you'll get lost and confused. It is unforgiving to lapses of attention.
Like any good SF movie, it contains at least one impossibility. In this case it is time travel. This movie, though, deals with the concept in a scrupulous and rigorous fashion. It may provide fewer laughs than Back to the Future and fewer thrills than the Terminator franchise, it is far more consistent than those, or indeed any other, movies about time travel that I have ever seen.
I don't want to talk much more than I have (which is little enough!) about the plot because, like The Truman Show or The Sixth Sense, it is far more enjoyable and rewarding to see it with as little advance information as possible. This is a fantastic film, in both senses of the word.
Oh, and I'm not joking about the need to pay attention; this movie has a more complicated timeline than Memento. And it doesn't hold your hand and help you understand what's happening in the same way that Chris Nolan did.
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