stu9003

It's the year 2057 and our Sun is dying. Sunshine follows the mission of the spaceship Icarus II, whose goal is to reignite our dying Sun by detonating a large bomb within the Sun's core.

Sunshine is pretty much as close to a "pure" science fiction film as you can get. I say "pure" sci-fi in that the emphasis is more on science than fantasy with an attempt at a futuristic story that contains some degree of scientific validity. One of the principal themes (I thought) was the ascension of the power of science to a similar status level as that of nature.

Overall, I found the story to be engaging, the characters interesting, and the film's themes thought-provoking. Sunshine is also very beautiful at times, featuring a fantastic musical score and outstanding visuals.

Another theme of Sunshine is that of the Sun representing the power of nature, a sort of natural God if you will. Some of the imagery involving the Sun was stunning. There's a particularly beautiful scene that involves the Sun and Mercury. You'll know it when you see it.

However, Sunshine isn't perfect. I won't spoil it, but the film takes a bit of a turn close to the end and I found a few of the later scenes to be somewhat jarring in contrast to the rest of the movie. I can understand where the director was coming from, but I thought these later scenes could have been executed a little better..

Regardless, still a great film. 8/10

A passenger plane takes off from Los Angeles and flies into disaster as a group of sleeping passengers awaken to discover that the other passengers have mysteriously vanished.

This made-for-TV movie was based on a Stephen King novella and was originally shown as a two-part miniseries on network television back in the mid 90s. The acting is about what you'd expect from a TV movie, the dialogue is slightly corny at times, and the special effects aren't great, to say the least.

However, I thought the Langoliers succeeded in doing something that you rarely see in horror films in that it successfully took that slow-building feeling of fear and dread that you get when you read a scary novel and transferred it to the screen. Generally speaking, horror movies these days tend to rely on shocks and scares, but the Langoliers is a slow-paced mystery thriller, kind of like a really creepy Twilight Zone episode, where our heroes spend much of their time trying to piece together the clues in order to solve the mystery of their predicament, all while an ominous feeling of oncoming danger just grows and grows. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. 7/10

This one plays more like a conventional thriller than the first film. Pretty early on, Lisbeth ends up in big trouble with both the cops and the bad guys and the film is basically about her using her smarts and toughness to fight her way out of trouble. Blomkvist is more of a supporting player in this one as his part in the story takes part completely separately from Lisbeth's. As a result, we don't get the neat interactions between Lisbeth and Blomkvist that helped to make the first film so interesting. There's also a lot more action in this one. That's certainly not a bad thing, but in some cases the action is very sensationalized and far-fetched.

Overall, as a sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the movie's fine as it expands on the characters, especially Lisbeth. On its own, however, it's really only an average thriller and is not up to the same standard as the first film. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who hasn't seen the first film.