Sunshine * * * *
Director: Danny Boyle.
Screenplay: Alex Garland.
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong.
Ingredients for a top of the range sci-fi =
1 dollop of “Solaris”.
Half oz of “Event Horizon”.
1lb of “Mission to Mars”.
A generous helping of “Alien”.
And a sprinkle of “The Shining”.
Give them to visionary director Danny Boyle to shake them up and… Voila.
In the not-too-distant future, the sun is about to die. A crew is sent to re-ignite it with a nuclear bomb; when they fail, a new team sets out to finish the job. But they find that flying to the least hospitable place in the solar system and staying sane and alive is no simple matter.
Boyle is Britain’s very own Ang Lee in his ability to continually switch between genres. This is his attempt at Science Fiction and it’s a damn good one at that. His use of atmosphere is the most striking thing about this, with eerie and highly effective sound effects and an excellent music score by Underworld adding to the overall sense of foreboding and creepiness. Using a multi-cultural cast also works in it’s favour in the way that you don’t know who will perish at any given moment, very much like Ridley Scott’s “Alien”. As mentioned above – and by most other viewers – it has a lot in common with several films of this genre and the denoument unfortunately turns more toward the “Event Horizon” side of horror. It doesn’t entirely work and feels a little tacked on, as if Boyle and writer Alex Garland ran out of ideas. However, this is still an impressively handled and often powerful outing for Boyle.
A very underrated addition to the science fiction genre and one of Danny Boyle’s finest films. His collaborations with writer Alex Garland has produced consistantly good results.
Mark Walker
MARKED MOVIES 
September 14, 2012 at 6:21 pm
I watched this whenever it came out on DVD and I was pretty loaded and may or may not have smoked something . I didn’t really get the whole “demon-man” thing. I just finished watching this again today and HOLY SHIT this is awesome! FIVE out of FIVE, Brother!
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September 16, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I think smoking a little something would add to this film bro. I just couldnt quite get the demon-god ending though. It seemed mis-placed to me and let the film down slightly. Still, I really liked it overall.
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