Primer

In 2004, a movie called Primer was released, written and directed by Shane Carruth, and no notable stars (except for one of the lead characters being Shane). This is an absolutely fascinating movie that you must see if you are in the mood to escape and think a little. This is not a simple movie to watch, yet it's very short - 77 minutes. I think this is a truly amazing movie.

The movie deals with the issue of time travel, but in the glorified sense that Back to the Future does. This deals with the nitty gritty of traveling backwards in time less than a day. It starts out with four friends who are working on projects in a garage in their free time. Two of the friends (Aaron and Abe)discover a way to interrupt the flow of time inside their machine, and even cause the contents to go backwards. It starts out simple enough: they have their vehicle outside, they set the machine at the point where they want to arrive, then they go about their day, at first, holed up in a hotel room avoiding the world but soon checking out which stocks had grown. At some point in the day, they would go back to the machine and enter it, and after about six hours in the machine, they were back at 8:30 am. Having the knowledge of that day, they would buy stocks, bet on sports games, and in some fashion profit off the knowledge.

Where this movie will lose people is that at some point, we learn that they have been experimenting with the machine individually, without the other's knowledge. Because of this, there are unforeseen consequences. At the end, you finally realize that you've been not seeing a straightforward plot, but you've actually seen doubles and triples of each of the characters. Aaron's character in particular becomes an unstoppable monster, going back in time and hiding his past counterpart in closets and attics, causing there to be multiple Aarons at the same time. The moment of truth in the movie is when Abe realizes the full of what Aaron has been doing and he finally separates himself. This is important because you can count on one hand the number of times you see Aaron or Abe in a scene by himself.

All in all, I think it's a fantastic movie that should be seen. It is hard to understand the first time, and maybe the second and third, but it's a wonderful film. The only real bad thing is the acting. It isn't exactly great, but it gives the movie more of an independent feel (and since it is an indie, it fits) and it gives realness to the characters. This isn't exactly a movie that fits in one genre. One can call it scifi if they want, or they can call it mystery, but either way, it's very good.

Here is a link to the trailer (which does the movie no justice):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE&feature=related