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Cinema Sunshine (2007) - Better than The Core

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,289
Rating
4.00 star(s)
This movie caught my eye when I saw that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (both of 28 Days Later and Dredd fame) directed and pretty much made this. It's a pretty solid space drama all around, but I do have three issues with it. To elaborate on two of them, I'll have to go a bit into spoiler territory here.

The first one is that it relies on the trope of someone going insane in space and fucking everything up. This just feels contrived at this point, and while Pandorum has this trope in a huge way, at least it had the justification of massive amounts of in-universe time passing. Sunshine doesn't have that at all. The crew is making a relatively pretty short trip with a ton of supplies and a thoroughly outfitted and well-built ship along with heavily evaluated and qualified personnel. There is almost zero chance of someone just randomly going insane. And even if they did, what are the chances that they would also want to sabotage the mission? I mean, come on. We don't need this to build suspense in the movie.

The second issue is how Christianity once again becomes the whipping boy of the plot. I'm really, REALLY not some sensitive susie here, but yeah... Shit's getting old, man. If we really were going to commit to the plot of someone sabotaging the mission, fine. At least give the antagonist some real depth and some real justification for doing this, and not just "lol God told me to." As a Christian, I'm not impressed, and Danny, your mom's disappointed in you.

The last thing is a bit of a small issue, but it's still kinda annoying, and that is the HEAVY use of shaky cam here. Look. I get it. We're right next to the sun. It's really fucking hot. It fucks with all your senses. Fine, I can accept some shaky cam there. But there are times where it's shaky... Just because. And that's just annoying. I can't see anything and I have no idea what's going on.

Enough negativity though. The ship's cool and the way the CGI department made the sun is hella cool and deserves a shout-out. I also really liked the dilemma presented in the beginning and how it was handled. Actually, the dialogue in general is pretty intelligent and well-delivered. Overall, I'd say give this movie a watch. It's not the best space drama I've seen, but I still kinda liked it.

Sunshine.2007.1080p.BrRip.x264.BOKUTOX.YIFY.mp4_snapshot_00.15.40_[2023.03.22_19.25.55].png
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
937
With what you've written, I'm highly surprised you'd rate it 4/5.. Those things you mentioned would make the movie end up a 4/10 for me.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,289
With what you've written, I'm highly surprised you'd rate it 4/5.. Those things you mentioned would make the movie end up a 4/10 for me.
I'd like to give it 3 1/2 stars, but XF doesn't allow that. But yeah, I still enjoyed it despite the issues. I've seen far worse movies and Sunshine has a lot of good things going for it.
 
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