I like really weird movies that make you think; Primer is one such movie.

I found out about it from Jason Kottke’s site, and bought it just from reading this paragraph:

Anyway, if you’re even a little bit of a geek, I’d urge you to check Primer out (it was recently released on DVD). It’s challenging in the way that Memento and Donnie Darko are, pays off in a human way like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does, and it gets my highest recommendation.

I really liked all of the movies he referenced, so I thought I’d take a chance and just buy it. It won a few awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and sounded interesting from Kottke post, so I bought.

From the Primer website:

PRIMER is set in the industrial park/suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed contemporary city where two young engineers, Abe and Aaron, are members of a small group of men who work by day for a large corporation while conducting extracurricular experiments on their own time in a garage. While tweaking their current project, a device that reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it by blocking gravitational pull, they accidentally discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities–ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.

There’s a few timelines available for you to try and figure out what happened after you watch it once. If you read those first, you’ll probably spoil some of the elements that make the movie so good. ‘Good’ wasn’t a word I would’ve used last night after watching it once — I was speechless and totally confused during the whole thing, but now that I’ve gone through the timelines, it makes sense now.

If you are interseted I highly recommend it; go rent it or borrow it from me if you are close by.