The second was made known to me during a conversation with Tony as he was visiting with Corrie and the fam in OKC. It's called "Time Lapse." In it, a trio find a camera that produces Polaroids of the next day. It sounds kinda silly, but the film is executed pretty well. Like Tony said, it was worth a watch.
Two of the trio are a couple, and the third is the scummy "best friend" of the guy in the couple. The boyfriend is a painter who, as you watch, you realize you care very little about, as he's an ineffectual bozo who must've been amazing to land the girl he has. The [SPOILER] revolation of the affair between the girl and the sleazy roommate comes as no shock, as I called it out loud to my television alone in the dark within the first scene.
The first movie was the real reason I wanted to put a post up. It's a super low-budget film written by and starring Shane Carruth, an actor and college graduate who's degree is in math (MATH in the house!). The movie is called "Primer."
It became well known in movie circles because it cost the boys only $7,000. Also, Carruth and his fellow writer pals didn't dumb down the math or engineering tidbits. There are two main characters who, along with two other buddies, are all engineers with a firm and do entreprenurial work on the weekends in their garages.
In doing some research into reducing the mass of objects, they discover a strange film developing on the object they put into their field. It turns out it could only develop with sufficient time, and that meant that the object had existed for longer than it was possible.
A discussion of a time loop is had, and the mathematical gloves are never taken off. These guys don't mess around.
Eventually, the idea is planted to build boxes big enough to climb inside of. Here's how it works: you turn the machine on, and walk away. Leave the scene all day, staying out of sight. Later on, you come back to the box and get inside. After a few hours, you get out of the box, basically a few minutes after having turned it on, six or eight hours before you got in. Follow?
That makes it sound almost straightforward, but the reality in the film is as confusing as possible. Which is why the paradoxes are too hard to face. Here's a helpful poster the team put together to help explain the way it works:
"Primer" is a good watch, definitely worth its 74 minute running time, even if it'll take me multiple viewings to wrap my head around.
One theme was, as Shane Carruth has stated, that scientific innovation usually comes by accident, as you're working towards some other goal, and usually when it happens, it's in a garage or a basement. Carruth has also stated that it always bothered him in movies how "prototypes" of scientific dealys are made of chrome and have shiny lights and such. In this film, you see how the guys actually build the first prototype, and it looks like something two engineer buddies would make in their garage.
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