(spoilers ahead?)

I like this movie, if for no other reason than it makes time travel boring (you sit in a freakin' box all day!). It's the first vision of a time machine that doesn't involve some portal of light or big flashy things.

As for the plot, good luck. I've watched it a couple times, read a couple timelines, and I still get confused at parts. It's one of those things where I look at it and can almost see the pattern but then things shift away from me.

That's the joy of it, though! I was mesmerized by this movie. Loved the prosaic feel - just as you said. it's not about Big Flash but about squirreling away your homemade invention in the back of a U-Store-It warehouse.

It's been hours now and I'm still buzzing from it. Yay indie movies!

I'd like to point out that this movie had a budget of $7000. They did a fantastic job with what they had.

Totally, Agro! 7 freakin' grand and the guy who made it starred, produced, directed, cinematographeried (?), etc.

This movie lit me up like nobody's business.

I loved this, but my memory is a little hazy (hmmm, better check my handwriting): are there a bunch of scenes in this movie where we slowly fade in, to find the two main characters already in the midst of a confusing conversation? That was brilliant if it actually happened.

Oh... I'm not saying there was anything wrong with the crazy plot. I love it too. This is one of the few movies I actually went out and bought.

Films like this make me wonder if every movie shouldn't be made on a shoe string budget (say... a couple hundred thou). I think George Lucas made his best films when he didn't have money falling out his asshole. Take away a director's special effects budget and it makes it easy to spot the great films from the flops. You can't cover up bad acting and a horrible plot with beautiful scenery and flashy explosions.

I mean, look at what these guys did! I think their camera work is amazing and they have a sense of framing and plot timing that really captures the feeling of the moment. Given a larger budget I doubt they could have improved on the film.

On preview (to PST): yeah, that made it hard to watch the film with my engineering friends (one of whom is actually getting his masters in Physics). They kept complaining because the technical talk happened too fast and was too vague. They refused to get the point: you aren't supposed to understand what the characters are saying!

These were the same guys who didn't get Signs either. Arggg...

[note: I'm an engineer too, but I know there's more than Star Trek and X-Files to the world of movies/tv]

I so agree, Sbutler! (why don't you post more here?)

This movie gave me hope hope hope that there will be more excellent movies made on zero budgets with kickass ideas. This has to be one of the hardest things to convey, the whole "keeping track of time and who's who", but they totally made it happen.

I can't wait for another movie from this guy.

Count me as another person who loved this movie. I've only seen it once and want to see it again, but I'm not counting on understanding much more than I do already...

I loved Primer! The first time I saw it I had to start it over the second it ended…and I still didn’t totally get it – which is really refreshing after seeing so many movies that seem to assume that their audience has the IQ of a rock.

The Primer website has a great quote from writer/director/etc Shane Carruth (who has a mathematics degree) about his approach to making a movie without having any experience: “A lot of math isn’t just the numbers,” he explains. It’s the fact that there is this problem that is seemingly unsolvable in front of you, and yet if you take it apart, it can be solved.” I love that Shane Carruth taught himself everything he needed to know - from visiting production houses to learn about filmmaking basics to studying physics so that the dialog would sound more authentic.

The budget for the movie was more like $30,000. The $7,000 figure is likely just for the film. I read it somewhere. Post-production costs + everything else were much higher. Still a shoestring, though, and a good movie.