Sunshine

I saw it on dvd a month ago or so (I live in Sweden so I guess that's why).

I really liked it too. It owes a lot to Solyaris (and Solaris) but makes something different of it, sort of.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I was lucky enough to have it show up at a nearby (about 20 - 25 minutes away) theater, and am very, VERY glad I went to see it there. I had just happened to read about it... I think the same article I saw that I mentioned earlier but can't remember (...I'm thinking it was in Maxim magazine). It was one of those films that gets a little extra push towards greatness in my mind when first seen in a good theater.
As a side note, I really liked the music in this flick as well, and last I had heard that was supposed to be out right after Christmas, but I did a quick check on Amazon and didn't see it there for pre-order yet.

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Quite simply, my film of the year. That it has been a distinctly average year, for me anyway, matters not - Sunshine would stand out regardless.

My thoughts.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

^What took away the one star/popcorn...?

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Wha?

I think he's asking what caused you to give it 4 popcorns rather than 5.

The glib answer would be "because I don't think it's worth 5" and I'm in a glib kinda mood today so I'll go with that.

Heck, if I got 80% in every exam I did I'd be darned proud.

Heh, I can remember being berated by adi for only giving The Return 4 1/2 when it was quite clearly the bestest film in the whole wide world. Ever.

Those were the days!

I'm glad so long as people give it 4 stars or more. Even though I think it's quite brilliant and deserves 5 of 'em.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

I didn't think it deserves 5/5, mainly because of this:
I was just wondering what Tatty's reasons were because his review seemed to be strictly positive.

Interesting to read your comment about the music, Tacitus, I liked it but my husband didn't. I will show him your post and point and laugh.

I can't speak for Tatty, and the question wasn't addressed to me, but I hope you don't mind me answering it in respect to my own choices.

It's not too rare that I'll write a very positive review that still only awards a film 4 or 4.5 stars/popcorns/whatever. One possible reason is that, while it was everything I would have hoped, it wasn't aiming all that high to begin with. A good example of this is Transformers. It aimed only to entertain me, and it did that quite well, but that's a pretty modest goal to start with, so despite being exactly what I'd hoped it would be, it only got 4/5.

Another reason is that even if I cannot think of a specific way to improve a film, if it doesn't blow me away for whatever reason, I won't give it a perfect score. I like it to mean something when I give a film 5/5, so I make a point not to award it unless I'm terribly impressed.

This is a little flawed, I admit, because the more I think about it the more I realize that I'm almost never blown away by a film upon first seeing it. Most of the films I'd give 5/5 to I loved initially, but have grown to love more upon subsequent viewings. So, perhaps I'll have to take that into account in the future.

Anyway, sorry to answer someone else's question, but I felt strangely compelled to.

Exactly. Even though Danny Boyle is one of my favourite directors I was apprehensive as to how he'd approach a Sci-Fi.

Maybe I just mark low (compared to others) generally but for a film, any film, to get 5 stars it has to move me. I know Sunshine moved quite a few people on here but I wasn't one of them.

This isn't to say that I didn't like the film a heck of a lot. I did - as I said, I haven't seen a better new movie this year although this has to be tempered with the fact that it'll probably be Spring '08 before I see all the '07 releases I want to and that I've not found 2007 to be a vintage year by any means.

So was Sunshine was an example of the latter?

D'oh, sorry, I should have clarified that.

Anyway, it's a bit of each in the case of Sunshine. I do think it had some noticable flaws; the one Adi quoted above being the most notable. I also felt the voiceover at the end was unnecessary. The movie respected our intelligence all the way until the last 30 seconds, where it decided we needed to be reminded of something. I prefer it when a movie lets us connect the last dot ourselves.

So, while one of the reasons I didn't give it 5/5 is because I make a point not to hand those out easily, I don't anticipate I'll bump it up down the line in this case.

Went and bought this last tuesday, only heard a little about it. Just watched it last night and I was blown away with pretty much everything in this movie. The visuals obviously are great, the casting/acting, the plot, music, just really a solid film and all great, i loved the editing in it aswell.

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Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. ~ Jimi Hendrix

OK, I got called out on my over at the Movie Tab, so I'll respond here. I found Sunshine to be well-crafted, beautifully-shot, engagingly-acted, and modestly-exciting-and-suspenseful. I recommend the film, but I also found it to be unoriginal, occasionally uninvolving, and straining to be significant. Maybe it's because I don't find Danny Boyle to be a full-blown visionary yet, but hell, I don't think that Wes Anderson, Darren Aranofsky or even Terry Gilliam (well, maybe The Grail) have actually reached visionary status. All four directors are highly individual and easy to spot while watching, but I don't think they've made a film as visionary as Children of Men, and I give that . I am always interested to see what they'll do because I always hope it will be their film which totally blows my mind.



Now, maybe being in the position of the "non-respected opposition" makes it sound like I'm ragging on this film or this set of directors, but it's just not true. I like the movie and the directors, so, since I was the one who went off-topic, I'll shut up now. Everybody go check out Sunshine, and if you like it as much as I do, I'll recommend at least another thousand films. I hope you like those too.

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My IMDb page

I wouldn't exactly say that was a 'call out'.

I doubt if DB craves anything remotely like being termed a visionary. If you look at his output you'll find nothing but extremely well-crafted mainstream movies, all done on a budget smaller than the mouse mat budget on the latest Peter Jackson film.

Interestingly, I found Sunshine a lot more satisfying than the extremely overrated dystopian chase movie that was Children of Men.

Hey, I disagree with both of you! Sunshine and Children of Men are both super-awesome, sweet, radical movies about the future. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'visionary', mark. I'm really sorry to be a pain in the butt about this, it just seems like you're talking about two different things with your comparisons. First to Anderson, Aronofsky, Gilliam who I percieve as self-styled personal, ideosyncratic stylists and then to Cuarón who isn't (with that third Harry Potter under his belt). So it seems like you could be talking about individual genius or just the ability to make a really great film, or both. Maybe you're saying that 'visionary' aplies to guys who have that personal genius + have somehow found some way to make it into something with "mass appeal" or something? Feel free to let me know if I'm reading too much or too little into your statements, or am just full of snot.

I also agree with Tacitus that Boyle doesn't seem to be trying to carve his initials in giant illuminated stone lettering with any of his films.

I can see calling it unoriginal, I don't know what you were thinking of specifically but for instance it reminds me a lot of the Abyss, guys cooped up together, the fate of the world on the shoulders of a few brave scientists and engineers, characters and viewers alike dazzled by luminous special fx. I'm not sure, maybe I would have been blown away by The Abyss when it came out (I'd like to think not though, that movie plugs the holes in swiss [mmm]) and maybe in 20 years I'll be embarrased for liking Sunshine so much. That's a little worrisome to me.

I guess I will have to think about that as I do my write-up for the movie (it's going on my top 100, after all).

Have you listened to the commentary on Sunshine? Even if you're not a fan of that particular DVD extra, Boyle does some of the best and he mentions a number of times that he knows Sunshine isn't the most original concept for a movie and that he's trying to implement some of the genre conventions. Deliberately.

I'd say that I'll still like the film in 20 years because I've been a fan of DB since he was a director on TV dramas like the Godlike Inspector Morse. That said, it's not in my top three Boyle movies.

EDIT - Looking at his filmography on IMDB I came across a few Boyle projects that I didn't realise contained his involvement: a great little TV movie called The Venus de Milo Instead and as producer on Alan Clarke's Elephant - the original and best film of that title about senseless massacre.

I love the man even more now.

Haven't listened to either of the commentaries yet but I intend to, because I really am interested to know what went on behind the scenes on that movie. I think part of the problem with commentaries is that the movies themselves are usually more fun to watch. When I watch all those awesome visuals with guys yammering in the background I start to think "why not turn the movie audio back on so I can just enjoy the thing, yet again." I'm trying to overcome this weakness.

I'd rank the movies I've seen by him like so:

Sunshine
Shallow Grave
Trainspotting
28 Days Later

The ones in bold are the only two I've seen more than once.
I was thinking of seeing Millions next.