Primer

Finally watched this film made by a group of friends one summer and enjoyed by Steven Soderburgh. Supposedly made for 7Gs it went on to acclaim at Sundance and made a decent amount of money at the box office and on DVD.

Let's see...what to write...it started off really interesting, I liked how it jumped right into this world and the audience is forced to catch up - not unlike Miami Vice. Thought the visuals were really awesome. Particularly how the filmmaker used objects as frames-within the frame to point your eye towards details. Several examples - use of the garage door closing, use of the video camera filmming inside the machine, use of windows. The lighting was of course, minimal, but quite colorful and I thought looked quite good. I imagine they used mostly practicals and maybe some gels and probably got a good colorist before the dvd copy I watched.

Acting style was solid, bought the relationships. Enjoyed the movie being only 77 min - happy to rent a Netflix - wouldn't feel comfortable spending 17 bucks at the Arclight.

Movie pace is rather slow in the middle and gets quite confusing at the end. Dialog written and delivered well, but the story structure and the rules of the world and how the machine worked were confusing. Felt like I was missing tension because I found myself really just wanting to see how the puzzle came together at the end and didn't care too much what happened to the characters.

If I were rewriting the script, I would have simplified the act of going back and forward in time and made it clear how they were stopping multiple versions of themselves from running into one another. Then, one friend betrays the original plan, the other friend finds out and everything starts to unravel in an orderly fashion that makes sense. The movie ultimately should've been about the friends - not the puzzle. It wouldn't surprise me if they filmed basically the first draft of the script and didn't rewrite it at all.

Regardless, the movie had a lot going for it: Number One - they made it. Number Two - conceptually interesting. Number three - pretty good characters. Number four - strong visual choices.

Hey, that's enough for me to watch it. And Soderburgh to make the guys next movie.