i just saw Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle) on Friday as it is in limited release in New York this week.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/sunshine/

you can view the trailer above. i was going to link to the official site, but there appear to be spoilers on there as far as i’m concerned, so i’d avoid it and go with the trailer above.

this movie is amazing. it was pretty much a 5 star movie throughout, although the ending let me down a bit and i’m leaning towards ultimately giving it 4/4.5 stars (which is problematic because i also saw Knocked Up this weekend – finally – and thought it was really funny – i.e. 4 stars – and while it was very good – it was just not remotely the same as watching the epic-ness of Sunshine – this also reinforces my boyfriend’s theory that you have to think about movies within their categories when rating them – i.e. drama and comedy are rated differently because there are different expecations, goals, etc.).

anyway, this is not a post about Knocked Up, which was great, it is a post about Sunshine, which was amazing (it is also apparently a post about Cillian Murphy’s eyes). the epic beauty of Boyle’s movie is just completely engaging. the characters, seven astronauts on a mission to “save the world” by delivering a bomb (the payload) into the sun that is dying, in order to create a star within a star, are beautifully sketched and all the performances are fine and even and well tempered enough not to take away from the larger picture of the film, which as i said, is just epic. Boyle is a master craftsman and i have really been a fan of his recent work (28 Days Later remains one of my favorite films of all time), not to say that his earlier work isn’t good (Trainspotting was genius and The Beach was underrated) but his collaborative work with Alex Garland the writer of both 28 Days Later and Sunshine, is what really works for me i think. just like what i responded to in 28 Days Later, Sunshine has all my favorite elements kind of perfectly assembled and executed – Man v. Man, Man v. Nature, and Man v. Himself. Sunshine has some of the most beautiful and horrifying juxtapositions working within it as well, to be so close to the sun as to constantly be worried about burning up, but also to be in space, which is fatally cold; to be trapped inside a small spaceship (no matter how huge a spaceship is, after 16 months on it and with years still to go to MAYBE get home, it has got to feel small and confining) and to be also trapped in the unimaginable vastness that is space…well these are weighty issues all around…and all beautifully handled here. so on to Cillian Murphy’s eyes, first of all, Murphy is just incredibly talented, and never more so than when working with Danny Boyle (although i have yet to see The Wind That Shakes The Barley – which i’ve heard is unbelievably good), regardless of Murphy’s talent though, he was particularly a good choice by Boyle for this film because of those insnaely unreal baby blue eyes. in the close quarters of the spaceship and the even closer quarters of a spacesuit or a trapped airlock, wherever, those eyes deliver for every second of insane close up. those eyes were just one in a series of really smart choices Boyle made.

here’s my last thought on this before i move on to what i should be doing today. Sunshine is exactly what a hollywood big budget film should be if the world (and specifically hollywood) was on the right track. this film was smart and beautiful, it was full of action and drama and special effects (that all the kiddies so love) and yet it didn’t talk down to the audience, it didn’t try to wedge in a romance where it didn’t belong, and the ending, while there is hope, is realistic, rather than tied up with a neat little unrealistic bow and delivered to the pandering masses so that they wouldn’t have to feel bad or think about anything when they left the theater. THIS is what hollywood big budget films should be, this is exactly it. ah, wishful thinking, how i love thee…