Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.


April 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 50

Total Comments: 20


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Sunshine / UK / 2007

Another genre for Danny Boyle to make a complete mess of, following his experiments with romantic comedy (A Life Less Ordinary), adventure (The Beach) and horror (28 Days Later, a film I still can’t understand why anyone likes). This time he’s off in space, with a supposedly gritty, intelligent portrait of astronauts under pressure, on their way to drop a bomb into the sun. The film has been compared in the UK press to, among others, Alien, Dark Star and 2001. For God’s sake, why? If this was an American film they’d be falling over themselves to condemn it’s total absence of narrative, it’s barely-even-cardboard characters, it’s unbelievably misconceived final act. The film looks great, and there are one or two riveting setpieces. But with this sort of budget and ‘talent’ on board, there’s absolutely no excuse for Sunshine to be as desperately average as it undoubtedly is.

by Tom Huddleston | Source: 35mm print
29 Apr 2007 2:54 PM | Comments (2)


Comments / 2 total / Submit Comment

  1. Doug / 1 August 2007 / 6:50 PM

    Thank you for noting that if this had been an American film, people would long ago have ripped it a new one. Boyle and Garland got away with murder here (of several beloved sci-fi classics, if not of their own paper-flat and highly expendable characters), and it’s not a pretty sight.

  2. tom / 2 August 2007 / 6:44 AM / URL

    …and yet, visit any slavering nerdboy movie fansite (mentioning no names) and they’re all over it. to quote C3PO, i despair, i really do.

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