Carina Chocano writes: "sticklers for linear storytelling are bound to be frustrated by narrative threads that start promisingly, then just sort of fall off the spool". Some reviewers were entirely put off by the film's obfuscated narrative. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter complained that Primer "nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture". "Primer is hopelessly confusing and grows more and more byzantine as it unravels," Chuck Klosterman writes in an essay on time travel films five years later. "I've watched it seven or eight times and I still don't know what happened." He nonetheless says it is "the finest movie about time travel I've ever seen" because of its realism: Ultimately, Klosterman says, the lesson of Primer regarding time travel is that "it's too important to use only for money, but too dangerous to use for anything else". The American director Steven Soderbergh is regarded as a fan of the film. The film has been selected to be part of The A.V. Club New Cult Canon. Donald Clarke, film critic with The Irish Times, included Primer at No. 20 on his list of the top twenty films of the decade (2000–2010). It was ranked number two in Popular Mechanics''' list of The 30 Best Time Travel Movies. Science fiction author Greg Egan describes Primer'' as "an ingenious, tautly constructed time-travel story". Awards Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival in 2004. Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films dealing with science and technology, the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Best Writer/Director (Shane Carruth) at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2004. Best Feature at the London International Festival of Science Fiction in 2005. References External links 2004 films 2004 science fiction films 2000s thriller drama films 2004 independent films American independent films American science fiction films American thriller drama films Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners Existentialist films Films about technological impact Films directed by Shane Carruth Films shot in Texas Sundance Film Festival award winners Films about time travel StudioCanal films Two-handers Films set in Texas 2004 directorial debut films 2004 drama films Films shot in 16 mm film 2000s English-language films Hard science fiction films 2000s American films