Sunshine

[Supreme Cmdr]

I somehow missed this when it opened. I must've been in a coma or something. Anyway, I grabbed the Blu-Ray version and watched it this weekend. Its really quite good, well acted and definitely something you'd watch again. If you didn't see this, get the HD or DVD version.

10/10

[stingray]

Take "Red Planet" (you know, the Mars flick with Val Kilmer, for the visuals), add some "Alien" (for the second half of Sunshine), some "Event Horizon" (the claustrophobia), some "Solaris" (for the psychological drama) and salt water (the perspiration), shake and you'll get Sunshine. If there is one movie that blatantly uses recipes from popular films, this is one of them. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they plagiarized, but those involved certainly looked at the other movies and took a lot of notes.

Don't get me wrong, the visual effects are exceedingly well done, there's no argument there for sure. The production values are great too, they didn't spare any expense. The Icarus II is a very plausible and nice spaceship design and every section of the ship serves a real purpose. (Why they use gold as protective coating is beyond me though?! I think there was a slight misunderstanding there. I mean, the heat shield of the space shuttle's underbelly is not made of gold... and it's also used to protect the crew from the dangerous solar radiation in orbit and you don't use a good conductor of heat to protect yourself from it in a spacesuit. But it sure looks good, so I guess they took some creative license there.)

The acting is a bit dicey in some spots and the male fashion-model-turned-physicist that's supposed to save the daylight at the end is downright creepy, at best. But for the most part the cast is well chosen and doing its job as astronauts convincingly enough.

The trailers are filled with spoilers of course and you'll know going in that not everything is going to go according to plan. The premise is interesting and the first half of the movie is very realistic and convincing. It's the second half where this film gets off the paved road and crashes into a tree. You don't really see any of that in the trailers, I guess they did that for a reason.

Make no mistake, this is a horror flick (NOT a space opera like "2001: A Space Odyssey") by Danny Boyle, the director of "28 Days Later" (another horror flick). The movie fools you in the first part into believing that this is just another techno-thriller, with submarine hatches and blinking computer read-outs, but soon enough you'll know what you actually came for halfway through.

There are quite a few movies who have used this technique of a ghost ship before, where you have a vessel that seems intact on the outside, with the crew missing inside. And you also know what to expect from those movies. It's no different here.

As far as I could tell, the movie flopped at the box office, which is a shame considering all the things it does right. The movie is good but also somewhat disappointing (unless you like that sort of thing). Sacrifice isn't as engrossing as it used to be.

7/10

The Good: The first half, the visual effects, the production values, the photography, the ship design, the premise, the cast.

The Bad: The second half, 'nuff said, you might as well leave after the first half, it's not like you are going to miss anything worthwhile.

Another thing that bothered me, even on the Nostromo you had a glimmer of hope for the crew, I believe that's where Boyle dropped the ball here. Maybe he should have taken more notes while watching "Alien."