[This is a re-post of my review from the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.  Upstream Color opens today in limited release.]

With Primer and his latest film Upstream Color, writer-director Shane Carruth has clearly established a unique cinematic voice. With the exception of a few filmmakers, Carruth demands every ounce of his audience’s attention. It’s great to have a filmmaker like Carruth out there who has an unmistakable style and knows how to keep us captivated. But in his films, holding our attention is a trick to get us to invest in solving his characters and story. Carruth hopes that his abstract, dreamlike narrative can hold us in its sway, and that by struggling to follow the plot, we will somehow care about the characters’ problems. Upstream Color is masterful at keeping our attention through its complex storytelling, but it ironically makes its emotions as nebulous as its plotting and characters.

Writer/director Shane Carruth is one of the more enigmatic filmmakers working today.  After bursting onto the scene with his cerebral Sundance hit Primer in 2004, Carruth seemingly disappeared.  He finally emerged late last year by announcing that he had completed production on his Primer follow-up, Upstream Color, and that film was set to debut at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.  Those looking for a more straightforward plot with Upstream Color were sorely disappointed, as Carruth crafted a film that was quite possibly even more complex than Primer, but it’s an unendingly fascinating piece of work that requires repeat viewings.

In the interim between the release of Primer and Upstream Color, rumors started to surface about an ambitious sci-fi project that Carruth was working on called A Topiary.  The filmmaker spent years developing the wildly ambitious pic but had trouble gaining financing, and he has seemingly given up getting the project off the ground altogether.  However, in a recent profile on Carruth, some highly intriguing plot details regarding A Topiary have been revealed.  Hit the jump to read on.

Writer/director Shane Carruth’s long-awaited follow-up to the smart (and more than slightly perplexing) 2004 film Primer is poised to be released on April 5th, and now the entire score for the pic, titled Upstream Color, has been made available online for your listening pleasure.  The official logline describes the film thusly: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism.”  I caught the pic at Sundance and thought it was great, but if you’re hoping for a more accessible film than Primer, prepare to be let down.  I’m still trying to formulate my own idea of what Upstream Color means/what happened in the film, but it’s nothing if not ambitiously original and it’s constantly engaging.  You can read Matt’s review right here.

Carruth composed the film’s score himself, and it’s a great piece of music that works wonderfully within the context of the movie.  Hit the jump to take a listen.  Upstream Color opens in limited release on April 5th followed by a gradual expansion before hitting DVD and Blu-ray on May 7th.

With Primer and his latest film Upstream Color, writer-director Shane Carruth has clearly established a unique cinematic voice.  With the exception of a few filmmakers, Carruth demands every ounce of his audience’s attention.  It’s great to have a filmmaker like Carruth out there who has an unmistakable style and knows how to keep us captivated.  But in his films, holding our attention is a trick to get us to invest in solving his characters and story.  Carruth hopes that his abstract, dreamlike narrative can hold us in its sway, and that by struggling to follow the plot, we will somehow care about the characters’ problems.  Upstream Color is masterful at keeping our attention through its complex storytelling, but it ironically makes its emotions as nebulous as its plotting and characters.

This time last week I was two movies into the triple feature I teased the last time we met. While I can’t say I was overly impressed by Gangster Squad, both Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained made their respective cases as qualified Best Picture nominees. Of the two, Zero Dark‘s unrelenting final act not only made it my top pick of the day but also provided some of the most sustained tension I can remember experiencing in a movie theater. Having now seen it for myself, I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with those who have voiced their disbelief at Kathryn Bigelow‘s Best Director Oscar snub.

Zero Dark Thirty praise aside, on tap in this week’s Top 5 are The Last Stand interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Knoxville, and more, a live-action remake of Toy Story, a new trailer for Primer writer/director/star/almost literally everything else Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color, Mama interviews with Guillermo del Toro and more, and all of our Sundance 2013 coverage to date. For your reading pleasure, a recap and link to each awaits after the jump.

A new trailer has gone online for Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color.  The film is Carruth’s first since 2004′s Primer, and his new movie carries the enigmatic synopsis, “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism.”  After watching the trailer, I still have no idea what the plot is about.  I’ve seen Primer three times, and trying to understand the time travel mechanics still creates a barrier between me and the film’s subtext and emotions.  While Upstream Color will probably be just as complicated (if not more so), this new trailer does a good job at playing to the romance and thrills of the story even though the plot remains unclear.  Hopefully, I’ll understand the tagline, “You can change your story’s shape, but the color will always bloom upstream,” after seeing the movie at Sundance.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film stars Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Sensenig, and Thiago Martins.  Upstream Color opens April 5th.

A new teaser trailer for Primer writer/director Shane Carruth’s follow-up film Upstream Color has been released online, and the trippiness continues.  The first teaser trailer arrived on the heels of the news that the film will debut at the Sundance Film Festival next month, and it provided an incredibly surreal and intriguing look at the mind-bending pic.  The logline describes the film thusly: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism.”  Two trailers in I still have no idea what this film is about, but it looks like a sufficiently wild ride and I’m really looking forward to checking it out at Sundance.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film stars Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Sensenig, and Thiago Martins.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27, and Upstream Color is set for a theatrical release on March 22nd.

Among the stellar lineup of films that were announced for the upcoming 2013 Sundance Film Festival was the welcome news that Primer writer/director Shane Carruth’s new film Upstream Color is set to debut at the festival.  Now the first teaser trailer for the follow-up to Carruth’s 2004 time travel pic has been released, and it’s appropriately intriguing.  The short logline we have for Upstream Color describes the story thusly: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism.”  This trailer doesn’t really elaborate on the film’s plot, but it does a hell of a job of teasing the wonderfully strange and perplexing world that Carruth has crafted.

Hit the jump to watch the teaser trailer.  The film stars Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Sensenig, and Thiago Martins.  Upstream Color will premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January, followed by a theatrical release on March 22nd.

Moments after writer/director/star Shane Carruth’s new film, Upstream Color, was reported as one of the films premiering at Sundance 2013, the first images, poster and synopsis from the picture were made available. Carruth’s previous film, the mind-bending Primer, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2004. Our brains have had eight years to heal from the time-traveling plotline, so we should be ready for another go-round with Carruth. But prepare yourselves, Upstream Color sounds like it’s anything but mainstream. Hit the jump for the synopsis, images and poster.

Shane Carruth’s debut indie sci-fi flick Primer developed a devoted following, but he’s been trying to get his follow-up off the ground for the past seven years.  Now it looks like he got his next film off the ground, According to CHUD, the new film is called Upstream Color and is being billed as a “romance/drama/thriller”.  Upstream Color is unrelated to Carruth’s previous-rumored film A Topiary, which reportedly had an “insane” script and the plot was described as “an abstract arthouse take on Pokemon.”

The writer-director is planning a 40-day shoot beginning in early November through the end of January with casting currently underway in Dallas, Texas (where Carruth shot Primer).  Carruth recently worked on the time travel effects for Rian Johnson’s upcoming sci-fi film Looper.   Hit the jump for more details on the film.

Shane Carruth made an astonishing debut in 2004 with Primer, a fine DIY example of hard (and I mean hard) science fiction.  He wrote, directed, starred, edited, and even composed the film for a reported $7000 budget.  Sadly, he doesn’t have a credit in the seven years since.  Carruth has another film in the works — rumored to be called A Topiary — but the funding hasn’t come together yet.  Director and lucky bastard Rian Johnson (The Brothers Bloom) read the script then tweeted: “Shane is alive and well and has a mind-blowing sci-fi script. Let’s all pray to the movie-gods that he gets it made soon.”  (Amen.)

Johnson is working with on his next film Looper, a time travel thriller starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Dano, and Emily Blunt.  Also working on the film?  Shane Carruth.  The Looper blog posted a new photo of Carruth on the set with the message “Shane Carruth is working on Looper. If you haven’t seen his film Primer, run don’t walk.”  Hit the jump for details on his role in production, plus more info on Looper.