Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Movie Review: Sunshine

It's the year 2057, the sun is dying and mankind faces extinction. Earth's last hope rests with a courageous crew of eight men and women to ignite the fading star with a massive nuclear weapon. Deep into their voyage, out of radio contact with Earth, their mission begins to unravel and they find themselves fighting not only for their lives, but for the future of us all.
Unforunately I wasn't able to see this movie in theaters due to it's limited release.
Sunshine is a brilliant (pun intended) film with very obvious influences; Ridley Scott's Alien, Paul W.S Andersons Event Horizon and Stanley Kubricks's 2001 A Space Odyssey, all master peices of science fiction. I was really impressed with Danny Boyles choice for the crew of Icarus II, Hiroyuki Sanada as Captain Kaneda, Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) as Ship Botonist Corazon, Benedict Wong as Navigator Trey, Cliff Curtis as Icarus II's physician and psych officer Searle, Troy Garrity as Comm Officer Harvey, Chris Evans (Eight Below) Engineer Mace, Rose Byrn (Star Wars ep: II AotC) Icarus II Pilot Cassie and Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins/ 28 Days Later /Red Eye) as the Ships Pysicist and sole operator of the payload. The crew each had very defined attitudes and their individuality reminded me of the crew of the Nostromo, the international feel made the believability much easier to accept.
The brilliance of Sunshine and other Sci Fi gems of a similar ilk isn't focusing so much on the antagonist(s) or the circumstances throughout the movie, but the characters individuality, and how those circumstances affect them individually and as a group. If the cast is believable it helps immeasurablly in the viewers suspension of disbelief.

For myself some of the best Sci-Fi movies out there are the ones have simplistic stories and complex characters put in unbelievable circumstances and how they cope with the situation. I highly recomend Sunshine it ranks up there with my top 10 favorite sci fi movies of all time. Or you could watch AVP2....but that would be silly.

A

2 comments:

  1. Hey, Will. Its Javen

    I watched Sunshine. It started out great and was pretty good until the guy entered the ship and started killing people. It got a little weird.

    But I liked it until near the end.

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  2. Hey Javen thanks for dropping by my blog!
    The ending was a bit dramatic. the thing I found interesting is how Pinbacker, the crispy captain from Icarus I, brought the whole Science vs religion into the storyline. Pinbacker was willing to sacrafice his crew and the human race for his beliefs (Jihadist), where as Searle the psych on Icaruss II seemed very similar to Pinbacker but sacraficed himself for his crew and the mission. (christ-like figure)
    I hope you visit more often. And get a PS3 meng, I wanna play some games with you and your bro.

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