Primer
Director: Shane Carruth
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 1.5
Finally, what the world really needs: a movie for engineers, by an engineer! Sure, it's mostly pseudo-science and jibber-jabber malarkey, and the "plot" is diced up and made intentionally and impenetrably vague, but Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was equally "clever" and "evasive" (quotation marks mandatory because we're in PoMo Land), and just about everyone loved that, thinking it spoke the truth about love and memory. Applause is in order for the ultra economical $7,000 budget (he followed Rick Schmidt's book, I imagine, and took the bus to work), and it brings to mind the futuristic creepiness of Lucas' student short Electronic Labyrinth and Darren Aronofsky's Pi, but the scatterbrained delivery and absence of character development leave all form and minimal substance. Go sell your thought fragments to someone else - we're chock full here.
