movies: sunshine

I love movie trivia and whatnot, but before I've seen a movie I generally like to know as little about it as humanly possible... enough to spark my interest in it (speaking of which, saw the new Harry Potter trailer before the movie... yummy!), but not enough that I can either work out what's going to happen or it gives away some vital plot point.

So Sunshine was a little bit of a mystery going in.

I'd assumed given the ads that it was a whole "we're all in a confined space and something's coming to eat us" movie... then part of the way through I though I was wrong and it was actually a "we're all in a confined space and we're losing our humanity and being all psychological and dramatic" movie...

Turns out it was a little from Column A and a little from Column B. First part very much "all psychological and dramatic"... last part "something's coming to eat us"... although not quite in the normal way.

And I have to say, the "interesting" camera work around the "something" has to have been because the particular makeup they chose didn't quite stack up to their expectations... I could be wrong, but it just seemed more like it was covering up bad effects than adding anything to the movie.

The other problem with those kind of "ensemble slasher" movies (I'm using a lot of "quotes" today, aren't I) is that you look at the cast and you think "yeah, don't know you, or you, or you, or you... so you'll all going to die painfully... but I know you, you, you and you, so you'll probably survive until at least the final twenty minutes"... and it was pretty much like that.

And speaking of casting, Cillian Murphy and his big blue eyes can just come along and be all intense and brightly blue in, well, just about anything... coz, basically, yum... and Chris Evans shouldn't ever let his hair grow out... he starts the movie with longish hair, and doesn't really start looking hot (or like himself for that matter) until he buzzes it back to that whole boot camp look. Michelle Yeoh has officially been added to that list of female actors that I'll just enjoy in pretty much anything... this role was definitely a departure from her usual (at least from what I've seen) all kicking, all chopping previous roles, but you totally buy her as this very "earthy" character. At least I did anyway.

It was more or less what I was expecting from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, given their previous work together on not only 28 Days Later but also The Beach amongst other things. In some ways it was a little bit like 28 Days meets The Beach... more a tension based scare thing than an overly gory thing.

In other ways though it's a little bit formulaic space ship movie... think Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and basically any other either deep space or underwater movie where bad things happen and our plucky heroes struggle against bad things happening to them and things blowing up and going wrong.

There are a few moments in the last section where you're kind of left just going "Okaaaaaay then....", but all in all, its not a bad movie.

yani's rating: 2 solar reflectors out of 5