Sunshine

Hope that guy is wearing sunscreen!

Wow. Netflix recommended this movie to me and though I had never heard of it before, I thought sure what the heck, I like science fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It sucked me in right from the beginning and kept me going until the end. Well, the last third of the movie could have been better, but the first two thirds were top rate.

The movie takes place in the future where the sun is about to burn out. Humanity launched a mission (Icarus I) to detonate a bomb on the sun in order to restart it. That mission failed and they launched a second mission (Icarus II) to do the same thing.

Straight up, space scares me. There is something about the darkness, the silence, the sterility and coldness of a spaceship that creeps me out. This movie, interestingly, makes light creepy. There are a lot of images of the blazing inferno that is the sun. It's the totalness, the completely engulfing feeling these images invoke which I find to be creepy.

The movie is not without its clichés. You have the "crew is expendable at the cost of the mission" choices, the "struggling to maintain sanity in an alien environment" dilemmas, and finally (and unfortunately) the "movie needs a physical antagonist" plot point. They are all done well though, with good pacing and good acting.

Last, but not least, I didn't feel like I had to suspend my disbelief much. I'm pretty demanding when it comes to that.

I highly recommend this movie to any sci-fi fans.

The Dark Knight

I'm a Christian Bale fan. I like Batman. Take that for what it's worth while I bash this movie...

The movie basically treats the audience like idiots... and for good reason, the majority of the population is uneducated and just plain dumb (with respect to IQ). They need the underlying themes and messages repeatedly bashed into their skull before they "get it" and when they do, they feel like they've discovered something so deep and meaningful that they rave about what a spectacular, breakthrough and though provoking movie this is.

I'll admit, the characters were good and the acting was wonderful, but it was (in my opinion) completely undermined by being force fed the obvious themes and terrible action sequences.

Yes, that's right. I think the action is god awful... even worse than the movie holding our hands to get the super deep and complex themes (sarcasm). Again, treating the audience like idiots, we are inundated with feats of magic and stupidity as Batman defies physics by appearing behind enemies (unbeknownst to them) in fully lit rooms with dozens of people present, or as groups of bad guys armed with guns watch Batman beat up their friend while they wait their turn.

Ironically maybe, I found the "cellphone sonar" to be the most plausible piece of fictional technology that I've seen in a while.

All in all, I think it's a good movie, I would definitely recommend it. I just don't think it deserves the ridiculous amounts of praise it's getting, nor the number one spot on IMDB.