Wednesday, April 11, 2007

A poor effort

My reactions to Sunshine went through several phases. Firstly: Danny Boyle has made another film, isn't that great? Then I read some reviews and they were very mixed. I formed an opinion that I would hate it, as it was based on some pseudo-scientific bullshit. In the event, I didn't mind the bad science much, but it was a poor film. I couldn't get over how badly told the story was, with lots of trendy action shots that were so blurry you couldn't see what had happened. And here's a tip: if you set your film in an unfamiliar environment, try to put in some establishing shots that explain where the different scenes of the action are, rather than just confusing the hell out of the viewers. And yes, I'm thinking of that long model shot in 2001 that perfectly sets up the situation on the Discovery. There are lots of references to Alien, 2001, and Solaris, but nothing emerges that isn't done better in one of those films.

Some nice visual effects, but not enough to save the day.

Make sure you don't confuse this with the rather fine film of the same name that I discussed a wee while back.

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