Monday, November 2, 2009

Just watched Primer for the first time

....wtf...

Pretty solid, very original sci-fi movie. It's like Back to the Future, minus Hollywood + a former engineer as director. In other words, more scientific... but still wildly conjecture since we are talking about __________[at the sake of preventing any spoilers, mild though they may be, i'll leave the sentence at this].

Go watch it. If you have Netflix, it's one of their watch instantly options. If not, good luck.

If you've seen it, please enlighten me. Or just join me in the wtf-ness of it all.

7 comments:

Murr Nation said...

Not gonna lie. This doesn't sound good at all...

PHSChemGuy said...

Murr, Joey's done an awful job of explaining the film, couldn't have done worse, in fact.

Primer deals with two friends - engineers, admittedly - who are working on a secret project. They're tinkering with the project in their garage and are keeping it secret from their friends and - to some extent - from each other.

As the film progresses, we see that they have each been experimenting with project much more than they are letting on to each other.

Bit by bit, the two main characters find themselves in a friendly contest - friendly at first, anyway - to see who can put the device to the best use.

It's phenomenal and only reveals all of the details on repeated viewings.

In that way, I found it very much like Memento or Fight Club or Pulp Fiction or even The Sixth Sense, in each movie, your beliefs in the actions and motivations of the characters shift radically as the movie progresses, and watching the film a second time allows you to see things as they really are - not as they seem to be.

It's one to watch when you have time to pay attention.

You can check out the full film on Google Video...

my post with embedded video...

It's also sitting on the shelves at the Sharonville library...pretty much always...

PHSChemGuy said...

Oh, and Joey, if you actually want t understand the whole film - every details, every "who does what when", then the answers are in The Primer Universe.

I'll admit that I haven't read it, though.

joey said...

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm DEFINITELY going to sit down for another viewing. Probably pretty soon actually. It's a great premise and relatively short (around an hour and 15 minutes). However, it doesn't spell a whole lot out so, like you said, a few viewings are needed.

After the first time, I was actually fairly impressed that I understood what the final scene - when Aaron is in the warehouse with a few contractors/construction guys - was even showing (wikipedia confirmed this).

I'll give the book a try. I'm kind of probably too interested in this topic.

joey said...

p.s. book = blog. it's late.

calencoriel said...

Did Monday's xkcd comic prompt your viewing of this flick, Mr. Ruff Ryder?

and when are you stopping in to get your bio book?

joey said...

guilty. probably one of the most involved xkcd's in a while

i wanted to today, but i have a test in the class that i would need to opt out of... i could give the swine flu defense and probably be fine, but im working on holding onto that get out of jail free card for a while. worry not though, i haven't forgotten