7. Primer
My favourite critic quote about Shane Carruth's notoriously impenetrable sci-fi Primer is that "anybody who claims he fully understands what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar". It is an enormously challenging film about two men who discover the means of time travel, and soon enough find themselves dealing with the consequences of their actions therein. Though the notion of an art-house sci-fi is certainly enticing, Carruth's film is more a cerebral work out and less an entertaining movie; from the verbose, clinical scientific dialogue to the labyrinthine nature of the story itself, the film is more perplexing than anything else. Though few would argue that Primer isn't fascinating, it's also completely tripped up by its own refusal to explain itself; instead, it comes off as cluttered, incoherent and, yes, convoluted.