sunshine

The last rental I had from last month's lot was Sunshine, which is directed by Danny Boyle.

Boyle has done lots of great films - Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later - and this is no exception. It really is a good film.

Interestingly, it's a proper sci-fi film as well. The plot is a little hokey - it's about them restarting the sun with a bomb, which is wrong on so many scientific levels, but apart from that is was pretty accurate, scientifically.

One of the unfortunate things with doing proper science fiction nowadays is that you have some true giants in the field - Solaris and 2001AD come to mind as particular example here, but also things like the first Alien and Bladerunner ride a cusp of respectability too. How Boyle deals with this is quite interesting - he essentially ploughs on regardless.

In other words, rather than fret over how something might be "a bit like 2001AD", or make it a homage or try to do something completely (self-consciously) different, he just does it - if it's the same/similar or reminiscent then fair enough, if it isn't then that's good as well.

It makes for a much straighter film. It makes it more believable - that stuff was like that in those other films and this one too, because we've both got it right, if that makes any sense.

There are also some interesting sub-texts to the film, dealing especially with God and the meta-physical, and it kinda makes you think quite a bit, but not in a particularly brow-beating manner, the questions are just there if you want to explore them.

It's also stunningly pretty. The CGI of the spaceship is some of the best I've seen - and what's more, it was apparently a fairly low-budget film. CGI is at such a state of maturity nowadays it's almost scary.

I kinda abandoned the whole "I always prefer 'real' effects to CGI" attitude when I learnt that the end shot of Spiderman 2 was entirely artificial. Sunshine just confirms that digital is now so good you generally can't tell the difference.