Danny Boyle does sci-fi, Cillian Murphy plays with the edges of sanity (again), Ferrel and Heder re-discover funny and Africans liberate France.
Sunshine – 4/5
Having tried his hand at just about every other genre, Danny Boyle turns his hand to Science Fiction. The basic premise is that the sun is dying and a mission is sent to deliver a bomb into the heart of the sun to restart it. Actually it turns out that this is second such mission, the first one having gone missing some seven years previously.
The film begins with an amazing reveal shot which shows us we’re not looking at what we thought we were. It sets quite a standard for the rest of the film to live up to and Boyle plunges us straight into the heart of things – there is no pre-launch build up, no character backstories, very little explanation at all. And he does a pretty good job of maintaining a constant state of tension throughout – there are very few relaxing moments in this film as the crew tackle mechanical failures, unexpected occurrences, tough decisions and their own mental frailties.
Things start to go wrong when they discover the ship from the original mission is still intact and divert to check it out. Anybody who has watched any sci-fi will realise that this is A BAD IDEA, but off they go anyway.
The crew is made up of a set of faces that make you go “oh, that’s whatshisface from whatwasit!”: Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Memoirs of a Geisha), the dad from Whale Rider, the Chinese guy from On a Clear Day, Rose Byrne (Troy, Wicker Park) and Chris Evans (The Fantastic Four, Cellular) together with Cillian Murphy doing his wide-eyed stary thing again to great effect. All of which makes it more interesting trying to work out who’s going to survive to the end. All give great performances and Murphy is his usual reliable self, but its Evans, with his most mature performance to date, who is the stand-out.
There is no let up as problem after problem is tackled, covering things like weighing up the life of one man versus the whole of humanity with no pause for reflection. It also has to be said that there is nothing new here, although Boyle does follow the mantra that if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best – 2001, Silent Running, Solaris and, especially, Alien. It is in trying to be too Alien-esque in the third act that things start to fall flat, which is a shame as the first hour or so deserved better.
And then there is the ending – you’ll either love it, hate it or be completely bewildered by it, or possibly all three. I think it had something to do with time and space being distorted by the gravitational pull at the centre of the sun (one of the explanations earlier in the film) but it doesn’t quite feel like it fits the rest of the film.
That said, there might not be a whole lot that’s original here – it plays a lot like the greatest hits of science fiction, but Boyle has made a hugely entertaining movie that will keep you gripped and probably on the edge of your seat throughout. Definitely worth checking out.
Blades of Glory – 3/5
Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are undoubtedly both funny actors, but both have been going through a lean patch recently. Heder has failed to live up to the promise of Napoleon Dynamite, having to make do with such limp fare as School for Scoundrels, while Ferrell, apart from a rare straight turn in Stranger Than Fiction, hasn’t done anything decent since Anchorman. So, the idea of pairing up to make a film about the world of figure skating could have been comedic gold or another disapp
ointingly unfunny Talladega Nights.
In fact, it turns out to be neither, but somewhere in the middle. The set-up is promisingly silly enough – the two are banned for life from skating after a podium fight, but when Heder’s stalker points out a loophole (‘cos “its kinda embarrassing stalking a has-been”) they start competing again as the first ever all-male pair. From thence the plot follows the usual clichéd route – the pair move from enemies to respect and friendship whilst battling to get their act right and not be sabotaged by their cheating opponents. The bickering between the pair works most of the time, but the film is at its funniest in the set pieces. A chase on ice-skates, which becomes very slow as soon as Ferrell and his pursuer leave the ice is a particular highlight and the skating routines themselves, like the costumes, get more outlandish and outrageous as the film goes on. Plus, we get the obligatory fellow frat pack cameo, this time from Luke Wilson as facilitator of Ferrell’s sex addicts support group.
This doesn’t have the gag count of a Dodgeball or an Anchorman, and if silly isn’t your thing, probably not for you, but it is certainly the funniest thing either star has done for a few years. Rather like their characters, they make a slightly unlikely but rather effective and successful team.
Days of Glory – 4/5
Definitely not to be confused with the above – this Oscar nominated film tells the largely forgotten story of the men from France’s African colonies (mainly Algeria and Morocco) who volunteered to fight for the liberation of France during the second world war. As such you can imagine it wouldn’t exactly be Jean-Marie Le Pen’s favourite viewing. In France, it went by the slightly more provocative title of Indigenes (or ‘Natives’).
The story focuses mainly on four of these soldiers – Said (Jamel Debouzze who’ll you’ll recognise from Amelie) who seems to manage to go through the whole war with one hand firmly in his pocket, Messaoud (who falls for a French girl, but has their letters blocked by disapproving censors), Yassir (who just wants to keep his brother alive and get as much loot as possible) and the educated corporal Abdelkader, who wants to progress in the army but is riled by the injustice faced by the African troops compared to their French counterparts.
The film follows this small group very closely and there is little sense of what is going in the wider picture, which, I guess, is kind of the point as it shows what it must have been like for these soldiers. As such the story is episodic – with brief moments of battle and long periods of the soldiers not really being sure what’s going on or being treated unfairly by the unthinking command. (The closing credits reveal that this didn’t stop after the war and, indeed, successive French governments have still failed to pay the pensions due to these soldiers). The episodic structure has its drawbacks – the director (Rachid Bouchareb) tries to cram in maybe a few too many plot strands and could have done with allowing his characters a bit more room to breathe, but it sets a mood for the film which is more reflective, punctuated by brief moments of gritty realism in battle. As we build towards the final battle in a village in Alsace the tension becomes almost unbearable.
The question of why these men volunteered to free a country to whom they really owed no loyalty is not really tackled. Instead we get a fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of some of the war’s least sung heroes and the injustice they faced – just contrast the differing reactions of French villagers to Abdelkader’s small unit to their reaction to him when he is part of a larger mainly white force. It is a shame they felt they need to add a modern day coda ripped straight out of Saving Private Ryan – it’s not needed – the film is a stronger remembrance of these brave and remarkable men without it.
Sunshine – 4/5
Having tried his hand at just about every other genre, Danny Boyle turns his hand to Science Fiction. The basic premise is that the sun is dying and a mission is sent to deliver a bomb into the heart of the sun to restart it. Actually it turns out that this is second such mission, the first one having gone missing some seven years previously.
The film begins with an amazing reveal shot which shows us we’re not looking at what we thought we were. It sets quite a standard for the rest of the film to live up to and Boyle plunges us straight into the heart of things – there is no pre-launch build up, no character backstories, very little explanation at all. And he does a pretty good job of maintaining a constant state of tension throughout – there are very few relaxing moments in this film as the crew tackle mechanical failures, unexpected occurrences, tough decisions and their own mental frailties.
Things start to go wrong when they discover the ship from the original mission is still intact and divert to check it out. Anybody who has watched any sci-fi will realise that this is A BAD IDEA, but off they go anyway.
The crew is made up of a set of faces that make you go “oh, that’s whatshisface from whatwasit!”: Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Memoirs of a Geisha), the dad from Whale Rider, the Chinese guy from On a Clear Day, Rose Byrne (Troy, Wicker Park) and Chris Evans (The Fantastic Four, Cellular) together with Cillian Murphy doing his wide-eyed stary thing again to great effect. All of which makes it more interesting trying to work out who’s going to survive to the end. All give great performances and Murphy is his usual reliable self, but its Evans, with his most mature performance to date, who is the stand-out.
There is no let up as problem after problem is tackled, covering things like weighing up the life of one man versus the whole of humanity with no pause for reflection. It also has to be said that there is nothing new here, although Boyle does follow the mantra that if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best – 2001, Silent Running, Solaris and, especially, Alien. It is in trying to be too Alien-esque in the third act that things start to fall flat, which is a shame as the first hour or so deserved better.
And then there is the ending – you’ll either love it, hate it or be completely bewildered by it, or possibly all three. I think it had something to do with time and space being distorted by the gravitational pull at the centre of the sun (one of the explanations earlier in the film) but it doesn’t quite feel like it fits the rest of the film.
That said, there might not be a whole lot that’s original here – it plays a lot like the greatest hits of science fiction, but Boyle has made a hugely entertaining movie that will keep you gripped and probably on the edge of your seat throughout. Definitely worth checking out.
Blades of Glory – 3/5
Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are undoubtedly both funny actors, but both have been going through a lean patch recently. Heder has failed to live up to the promise of Napoleon Dynamite, having to make do with such limp fare as School for Scoundrels, while Ferrell, apart from a rare straight turn in Stranger Than Fiction, hasn’t done anything decent since Anchorman. So, the idea of pairing up to make a film about the world of figure skating could have been comedic gold or another disapp
ointingly unfunny Talladega Nights.In fact, it turns out to be neither, but somewhere in the middle. The set-up is promisingly silly enough – the two are banned for life from skating after a podium fight, but when Heder’s stalker points out a loophole (‘cos “its kinda embarrassing stalking a has-been”) they start competing again as the first ever all-male pair. From thence the plot follows the usual clichéd route – the pair move from enemies to respect and friendship whilst battling to get their act right and not be sabotaged by their cheating opponents. The bickering between the pair works most of the time, but the film is at its funniest in the set pieces. A chase on ice-skates, which becomes very slow as soon as Ferrell and his pursuer leave the ice is a particular highlight and the skating routines themselves, like the costumes, get more outlandish and outrageous as the film goes on. Plus, we get the obligatory fellow frat pack cameo, this time from Luke Wilson as facilitator of Ferrell’s sex addicts support group.
This doesn’t have the gag count of a Dodgeball or an Anchorman, and if silly isn’t your thing, probably not for you, but it is certainly the funniest thing either star has done for a few years. Rather like their characters, they make a slightly unlikely but rather effective and successful team.
Days of Glory – 4/5
Definitely not to be confused with the above – this Oscar nominated film tells the largely forgotten story of the men from France’s African colonies (mainly Algeria and Morocco) who volunteered to fight for the liberation of France during the second world war. As such you can imagine it wouldn’t exactly be Jean-Marie Le Pen’s favourite viewing. In France, it went by the slightly more provocative title of Indigenes (or ‘Natives’).
The story focuses mainly on four of these soldiers – Said (Jamel Debouzze who’ll you’ll recognise from Amelie) who seems to manage to go through the whole war with one hand firmly in his pocket, Messaoud (who falls for a French girl, but has their letters blocked by disapproving censors), Yassir (who just wants to keep his brother alive and get as much loot as possible) and the educated corporal Abdelkader, who wants to progress in the army but is riled by the injustice faced by the African troops compared to their French counterparts.
The film follows this small group very closely and there is little sense of what is going in the wider picture, which, I guess, is kind of the point as it shows what it must have been like for these soldiers. As such the story is episodic – with brief moments of battle and long periods of the soldiers not really being sure what’s going on or being treated unfairly by the unthinking command. (The closing credits reveal that this didn’t stop after the war and, indeed, successive French governments have still failed to pay the pensions due to these soldiers). The episodic structure has its drawbacks – the director (Rachid Bouchareb) tries to cram in maybe a few too many plot strands and could have done with allowing his characters a bit more room to breathe, but it sets a mood for the film which is more reflective, punctuated by brief moments of gritty realism in battle. As we build towards the final battle in a village in Alsace the tension becomes almost unbearable.
The question of why these men volunteered to free a country to whom they really owed no loyalty is not really tackled. Instead we get a fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of some of the war’s least sung heroes and the injustice they faced – just contrast the differing reactions of French villagers to Abdelkader’s small unit to their reaction to him when he is part of a larger mainly white force. It is a shame they felt they need to add a modern day coda ripped straight out of Saving Private Ryan – it’s not needed – the film is a stronger remembrance of these brave and remarkable men without it.
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