Sunshine.

"Reigniting the sun: it's a science-fiction proposal that's naturally grandiose and metaphorical in concept... and promising in terms of narrative stakes, yet [director Danny] Boyle and [screenwriter Alex] Garland wisely throw a bunch of curve balls at the audience," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

"The fun in watching Sunshine relies on entering knowing the concept and not much more; Garland piles so many divergences, catastrophes, and moral dilemmas on top of one another with such accelerating swiftness that it grows impossible to look away. Things might get overwrought, silly even, but it's immensely pleasurable plunging headfirst into the fiery mess-even (or especially?) when it turns into an interstellar slasher film."

Updated through 7/20.

"Sunshine has been marketed as a cerebral science-fiction film (it even prompted us to discuss that very topic on this week's IFC News Podcast) but it's much more visceral than that," writes Matt Singer. "To be sure, there are plenty of 'big ideas' - mostly about the morality of mankind intervening in God's plan for the Earth, and whether such a God or a plan even exists at all - but at times, especially near the end, this is more Jason X than 2001: A Space Odyssey, if only Jason X were a good film with characters we cared about."

Also at IFC News: Aaron Hillis talks with Boyle, who tells him, "For whatever reason, whether good or bad in the short-term, our dedication to cities, progress and science in the long-term is astonishing. That's the path we're all on together, apart from the Taliban. It will enhance and maintain life given us by the start. That's a good thing, I think."

"Ideas scintillate over the surface of Sunshine without ever quite igniting, but at least the movie sparkles," writes Nathan Lee in the Voice. "What it doesn't do is cohere. Action flick, sci-fi thriller, metaphysical adventure, incoherent allegory, ethical hypothesis, and horror film all at once, this mad multitasker has the agenda of a dozen movies. Problem is, we know which ones."

2001, Alien, Solaris. "These allusions, and many others, merely underscore how much better those other films are," writes Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix.

"Remember that old Twilight Zone episode in which the earth and the sun got way too close for comfort?" asks Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "As realistic and science based as any film about rocketing to the sun can hope to be, Sunshine elegantly, eerily taps into the same anxiety as that Twilight Zone episode - that we're all part of a particular cosmic scheme that will eventually, inevitably end."

Jason Silverman talks with Boyle for Wired News. And Claire Faggioli talks with Boyle, too - for SF360.

Earlier: "Anticipating Sunshine." and "Sunshine.," an April entry compiled during the days of the film's UK run.

Updates: Michael Guillén talks with Boyle, too.

"It's a good thing Boyle, whose impossible to categorize career has leapt from bravura breakout Trainspotting to zombiepocalypse film 28 Days Later to the slightly slushy kids flick Millions, is always such an imminently watchable director," writes Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog. "Sunshine may have some of the grand and solemn coffee shop philosophies of certain 70s sci-fi films, but it plays out like a smart, taut combination of Event Horizon and 2010. (Oh, hush now, 2010's not so bad.)"

Updates, 7/19: "Disappointingly, nobody actually says 'Negative, Captain,' but there's a lot of hushed, urgent talk about adjusting trajectories and such, and it comes as an immense relief when serial calamity strikes," notes Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly. "don't mean to put you off Sunshine, which is the most ravishingly atmospheric movie I've seen all year.... For sheer technical virtuosity, British cinema has every reason to thank Boyle and his Cool Britannia cohorts for dragging it out of its long obsession with the kitchen sink, and at 50 the director has grown up and away from the callow cynicism of Trainspotting. But aside from the lovely family film Millions, Boyle has never been very good at the human thing, and still isn't."

Danny Boyle has "trashed the suspense film (Shallow Grave), the stoner film (Trainspotting), the musical farce (A Life Less Ordinary), the horror film (28 Days Later) and now with the new space exploration movie, Sunshine, he destroys science-fiction," growls Armond White in the New York Press.

"While Boyle may occasionally step on the accelerator without paying heed to spatial orientation or character development, Sunshine has, simply put, stunning moments of sheer exhilaration fit for a big-budget spectacle scaling the epic dimensions of the cosmos," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine.

"[T]he plot does not compute," protests Robert Cashill. The film represents "a series of escalating wrong choices."

Nick Schager at Cinematical: "A gorgeously crafted intergalactic saga sorely lacking in originality or profundity, Boyle's film marries 2001 aesthetics with an Alien narrative to create a rather straightforward - and superficially entertaining - adventure devoid of much meaning."

Reeler ST VanAirsdale talks with Boyle.

Updates, 7/20: "If Sunshine plays out more like a viscerally pleasurable diversion than an intellectually stimulating head trip, it's largely because Mr Boyle tends to lean on familiar genre stratagems and his estimable technique rather than risk anything by going too far out and freaky," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "[W]hat's most interesting about Sunshine isn't whether the crew members survive but that they're willing to blow themselves up for their beliefs. 'I think it will be beautiful,' says one, contemplating annihilation, which doesn't make this the first movie about suicide bombers, only one of the more curious."

"[A]s gifted a filmmaker as Boyle is," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, "he can't sustain the mood of dread he builds in the movie's first act. Slowly, Sunshine begins to creak under the considerable weight of its own pretensions."

"[T]hough it can't maintain its momentum all the way to the end, Sunshine until it stumbles is gratifyingly far from the usual space-opera stuff," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

"[N]o other film I've seen has made such a palpable on-screen presence of the sun's deadly heat and blinding light," writes JR Jones in the Chicago Reader.

"On paper, it's a horror movie for dour physicists," notes Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "But the paper version wouldn't hint at the aggressively showy visuals, or the punishing sound effects and music, set at a volume fit to blow viewers back into their seats like the guy in the old 'Is it live or is it Memorex?' ad."

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: "So, anyway, younger girls won't like this movie, unless they know what happens under an automobile hood. Younger boys won't like it because the only thing that's possibly going to blow up real good is the sun. But science-fiction fans will like it, and also brainiacs, and those who sometimes look at the sky and think, man, there's a lot going on up there, and we can't even define precisely what a soliton is."

"[U]tterly unique, fresh and even revolutionary," declares Aaron Dobbs. "And yet, even with such virtual hyperbole, Sunshine may not achieve classic status."

James Rocchi sits in on a roundtable interview with Boyle for Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at July 18, 2007 12:02 PM