Under the Sun

The guys behind "28 Days Later", director Danny Boyle, and writer, Alex Garland bring us another psychological thriller this summer with "Sunshine". First off, I want to point out that I have no idea why there is such a limited release on this thing. "Sunshine" is what I would consider a big budget sci-fi thriller. It's not that I have anything against the Hi-Pointe, I really like the place actually. But I guess since this technically is a "foreign" film, the bigger theatres aren't going to touch it.

"Sunshine" follows the voyage of the multi-national crew of the Icarus II on their mission to re-ignite the dying sun. The sun has impacted a Q-ball and it's eating all of the suns hydrogen. The previous mission, aboard the Icarus failed and never dropped their payload, a massive dark matter bomb, into the sun. No one knows what happened to them, they were never heard from again. The mission is supposed multi-national and you can tell just by the name of the ship. NASA and the American government would never name a ship after a failed ship, itself named after another failure. That's just bad luck. Unfortunately, I guess it really was bad luck for them. Following the same course that the Icarus took seven years earlier, the movie starts while they are in-between the orbits of Venus and Mercury. And since they are following the same course, what do you think they find? Yeah, the Icarus. So now the question, do continue with the mission, or do stop and try to find out what happened? I'll say this much, when you find yourselves in situations like this, "Do we keep going, or do we stop and get out?" KEEP GOING! How many movies do you have to see to know you don't stop the car, you don't go in the alien spaceship on the weird planet, and you most certainly, never, ever, EVER, GET OFF THE BOAT!

But forget the horror flick aspect, that's really just secondary. Really everything in this movie is secondary to the Sun. It's very impressive, even if it is dying. The special effects through out are just spectacular really. As I sad, I was really surprised, especially afterwards, that a movie with so many large scale special effects, usually something more aimed at the masses, was in such limited release. Most people who would go to the Hi-Pointe usually would be looking for something more artistic then this was, story-wise at least. And most of the people who normally might go see exactly this type of movie may be put off by idea that it's showing at a typically art house theater just because its "fur-ign".

Oh, and I guess it is technically sci-fi, but it's about as close to scientific fiction as you're going to find in the movies these days.

-Dan