Tuesday, May 10, 2005

PRIMER

I watched Primer tonight and generally enjoyed it. I was pretty knocked-out by how great the film looked.

This is one of those occasions where the Big Internet Hype is a decidedly good thing. Pre-DVD and internet, this three-year, $7,000 labor of love would have languished on video store shelves and played in midnight double-features with Aronofsky's Pi.

It's not a perfect film, and maybe not even a great one (though it's one of the best science fiction films of recent years). I'm more in the mood these days to use second viewings of films to bring myself in line with a film's rhythm and language than to unwind ambiguous plot machinations, and what's packed into the last fifteen minutes probably demands repeat viewing. Still, an assured and stylistically fantastic debut.

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting, Russ--as you know, I'm a big fan of good SF, so I'll give this a look-see.

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  2. I think you'd dig it. The puzzle movie aspects in the last third stall some of the really amazing scenes of discovery, but it's got an enormous amount of intellect and creativity.

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  3. It was shot on 16mm, so it's not really digital, if that's what you meant.

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  4. CRAP. No wonder it looked so good. Fixed.

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