Sunshine

Sunshine is a movie that presents an intriguing premise - what if our sun were dying? Unfortunately, director Danny Boyle isn't able to capitalize on that premise in order to make an original film. Instead he has cobbled together elements from 2001, Alien, and Event Horizon (among others) in order to make what feels like a Sci-fi's Greatest Hits movie. If you're a fan of science fiction, you'll have seen this all before. Yet I must confess: in spite of how familiar it felt, I still enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

The movie follows a team of eight astronauts aboard the Icarus II as they travel to the sun with a bomb large enough to reignite the dying sun. They leave behind an Earth nearly frozen and on its last legs. If they fail, everyone is doomed. The pressure is even more intense as they are following in the footsteps of the lost Icarus I, the ship sent years earlier to restart the sun that mysteriously vanished. The crew is made up of your typical archetypes, like the stoic captain (Hiroyuki Sanada), the uncertain science officer (Cillian Murphy), the hot head engineer (Chris Evans), and the shifty doctor (Cliff Curtis). To give away what happens on their trip would be unfair (although not too hard to predict on your own), but suffice it to say, things go awry.

I suppose why I was so engrossed by this movie had to do with the visuals and sound. For such a small budget movie, it looks very impressive. That may be because, unlike Transformers, the visuals aren't the center attraction, but simply used to enhance the film. You appreciate them more because they aren't on screen all the time. The sound is also unusual and intense, creating a feeling of really being on a space ship. All these elements combined to provide a great example of why seeing some movies in a theater is still the best way to watch something.

One thing this movie lacked was a sense of urgency. We're told the world is on its last legs, that these eight people are humanity's last hope. By not seeing Earth during its darkest hour, we have a hard time getting invested in its fate. I got the impression that Boyle wanted this to be Children of Men in space, but it simply lacked that human edge that the other film had. That said, there were little moments of wonder sprinkled throughout that attempted to make things more relatable. Perhaps my favorite of these moments was when the crew flew past Mercury, all wide-eyed with awe. It made me realize that we tend to forget about that planet closest to the sun.

I realize now that many people reading a synopsis of this film might immediately think of The Core, a film with a very similar premise but pointed inward instead of upwards, so to speak. Thinking of that movie might bring to mind images of cheesy disaster flicks, something this is most decidedly not. Boyle made a very strong attempt at creating a scientifically believable film, and I pretty much went along with everything that was sold to me. Indeed, this is a smart movie for the most part, and were it not for the final half hour, it might have been able to overcome its familiar plot points to be a fairly transcendent experience.

Again, I don't want to give away too much, but the film basically presents us with an hour long tense, but thoughtful, movie. Yet the final third becomes something so different from what we've been presented so far that it almost runs the thing off the rails. It's not that the final direction is bad, just that had it been that movie from the start it wouldn't have felt so jarring. Thankfully the movie is able to overcome this plot twist in the final minutes and present a surprisingly resonant ending.

There were moments where I thought that Sunshine could end up among the year's best movies. It may still. I really had a great time with it, and while I felt like I'd seen much of it before, Boyle was able to present familiar scenes and conventions in an exciting way. Were it not for the drastic tonal change in the climax, this would have been a great movie. As it stands, it is simply a fun time at the movies.

*On a side note, I've found that Fox Searchlight has done some of the worst advertising for this movie I've ever seen. In many ways it would be better to not advertise at all than what they're doing. In essence, they've placed ads all over the Internet showing who dies in the movie and how. Please avoid these if at all possible. You may want to see this movie, you may not, you may be undecided. Whatever your stance, seeing how the characters die isn't going to make you want to go if you didn't already, and it ruins much of the impact if you do want to see it.

The Simpsons Movie

About ten years ago they would run a Simpsons version of the THX logo before movies. In it, the audio would be turned up so loud that everyone in the audience exploded - except for Grandpa Simpson, who would yell at the screen "Turn it up!" At twelve years old, my friends and I found that to be the funniest thing imaginable, and the first time we saw it we ended up talking about it more than the movie it was preceding. That really speaks to how big of a cultural phenomenon The Simpsons was in the mid 90's, something that seems to have faltered as the show trudged on, now nearing twenty years on air. Yet in spite of how long the show has been on, or perhaps because of it, The Simpsons Movie is a refreshingly funny and smart film. It's almost as if they used the past 18 years to really come up with something worthy of the big screen.

When Homer Simpson befriends a pig, all hell breaks loose in Springfield. After an unfortunate mistake on Homer's part, the city of Springfield is quarantined inside a giant bubble. Although the Simpson clan is able to escape the bubble, the rest of the city is trapped, and it becomes Homer's duty to free the town before it's too late. In essence, it sounds like a run of the mill episode of the show, yet it isn't. In many ways, this feels surprisingly epic, like it deserves to be seen on the big screen. There's always the argument that TV shows turned movie won't work because no one wants to pay for something they can see for free every week (a fact Homer reminds us in the audience of in a not so subtle way). Yet this film overcomes that by upgrading the animation, creating a plot that really needs more time than 20 minutes will allow, and by trying to make us connect with the characters instead of just laugh with them.

The jokes are fast and furious here. I feel like I was at least chuckling throughout, and there were a number of laugh out loud moments (Bart's nude skating scene provided a great laugh, as well as reminded us why we love The Simpsons - they always mess with conventions). Also, a lot of characters get at least one good joke, either verbally or visually, which is impressive considering the number of characters this show has accumulated. It might have been nice to give some other characters more screen time, like Moe or Mr. Burns. Yet focusing primarily on just the Simpsons was probably a smart move as it made this feel more like a movie and less like a TV show with a lot of asides.

Honestly, if you like The Simpsons you'll like this movie. I was a little worried that it would just feel like a couple episodes cobbled together (like the Family Guy movie), yet it didn't. After seeing it, I actually kind of hope that Matt Groening and Co. realize that it's finally ok to let The Simpsons end on TV, because these characters feel like naturals on the big screen.

Transformers

As I've written before, I hold Jurassic Park to be the quintessential blockbuster of my generation. The sense of pure awe you get from seeing those dinosaurs brought to life on the big screen for the first time is something that has not been matched by any film since. Sure, some have tried (Independence Day, War of the Worlds), but none were able to equal the level of utter wonder of Spielberg's dinosaur film. Until now. While I think Transformers has some deeply flawed elements, it is nonetheless the most jaw-dropping summer blockbuster to be released in the 14 years since Jurassic Park upped the ante on cinematic wonderment.

The story is largely an excuse to find a way to present giant robots fighting each other. Eons ago there were two factions of Transformers: the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the Decepticons, led by Megatron. The source of power on their home world of Cybertron was a cube called the Allspark. When Megatron tried to take the Allspark for himself, Prime launched it into space. It eventually found its way to Earth, with the Autobots and Decepticons in pursuit. The only person who holds the key to locating it is Sam (Shia LaBeouf), and both sides race to find him before the other. There are subplots including a love story between Sam and Mikaela (Megan Fox), and a search for the source of an attack on an Iraq base. But really, it's all a set up for the final 30 minute free for all.

I want to get out of the way my two biggest complaints first. One is a problem any casual film goer would probably notice, while the other is something that is from more of a fan perspective (I grew up with the cartoon and toys, although I have only vague memories of most of the story). The problem that should have destroyed the film is the script, which has to be one of the dumbest put to screen in recent memory. When we first meet all the Autobots, we are told they learned how to talk by reading the Internet. The same must be true for whoever wrote the screenplay as not a single character seems to know how normal people speak. The jokes are often painfully bad, more in the vain of inducing groaning than laughter. And did these writers only ever meet one black man in their life? How else to explain that two different black characters treat their mothers/grandmothers in derogatory ways? Yet the film seems almost to be Michael Bay's thesis that in the right hands, the script is completely unimportant. And you know, he provides a strong argument.

The other problem is one that I think a lot of fans feared when Bay said he's the best man to direct this film because he thinks the idea of transforming robots is stupid (this is the same director who gave us such thinking man's films as Armageddon and The Island). As a result, the Transformers take a back seat to the humans. Optimus Prime's first appearance is not for an hour, while Megatron shows up only for the final battle. My own personal problem was the lack of Starscream, the one part of the original Transformers that I strongly remembered and loved. Starscream was Megatron's right hand "man" but always had aspirations for overthrowing Megatron, something he eventually accomplished. Here he shows up only at the end, and has just one line of dialogue. While the film alludes to the tenuous relationship between the two Decepticons, it is not really notable. And really, that is one example of how all the Transformers are treated: we just don't get to know any of them, they are never more than just giant robots. Still, Bay made up for Starscream's lack of presence by giving him the most bad ass moment in the film, as well as leaving open the possibility for a much larger role in the inevitable sequel.

Really, though, everything else works very well. The acting is good, and I am now convinced that Shia LaBeouf will become one of the biggest actors of his generation. He has an undeniable charm, and a real screen presence. The true star, though, is the special effects. Wow. Much like with Gollum or King Kong in recent years, the CG characters become real as the film progresses. And to see multiple CG robots battling it out is truly impressive. Anyone who played with Transformers as a kid will probably remember taking two action figures and smashing them into each other, playing out what in their minds was the most epic battle ever imagined. There is no other way to describe the final 30 minute battle than as Michael Bay transporting our 8 year old imaginations with those toys onto the big screen. And while I was highly skeptical of Bay's decision to focus so strongly on humans over Transformers, it paid off in spades. While I really didn't care about the characters, it gave the film a sense of hugeness, as we saw these robots from human perspectives. When you first see a Transformer transform, it's a jaw dropping experience in part because the characters witnessing it are so amazed. It really is the equivalent to the first time the dinosaurs appeared in Jurassic Park.

I suspect that had it not been so dumb and poorly written, Transformers would be widely considered to be one of the few elite popcorn movies, in the same category as Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Still, it is the closest to that kind of pure entertainment we've had in more than a decade, and my mouth was hanging open for large portions of the run time. Perhaps the biggest sign of this film's place in history was the looks on the kids' faces around me as I left the theater: their eyes were wide open with awe, and as they walked past, one kid said to another "We're watching that again." I got the feeling they saw the same thing I saw when the T-Rex attacked those two cars so many years ago.