By far, The Nines was the best of the bunch.

APRIL

• Sunshine (AppleTV) ****
• 28 Weeks Later (AppleTV) ***
• Ronin (AppleTv) ****
• Skinwalkers (AppleTV) **
• Saved! (AppleTV) ****
• 30 Days of Night (AppleTV) ***
• Into the Wild (appleTV) *****
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (AppleTV) **
• May (AppleTV) ***

[amazonify]B000Y7U98C:right[/amazonify]In my never-ending quest to pur off law school homework, I rented the 2007 film Sunshine off my AppleTV last night. I had heard good things about it, but never got the chance to catch it while it was in the theatres. Besides, it has Chris Evans in it – a reason alone to watch it.

l also have been a long-time fan of Danny Boyle ever since he came out with the film, Trainspotting in the 1990s.

Unlike Trainspotting, or even 28 Days Later, Sunshine is not an instant masterpiece of genre film. It is, instead, just a well-made science fiction work.

Synopsis: In the future, the sun is dying and a team of scientists are on a possibly one-way mission to reignite the star to save life on planet Earth, which is caught in an ice age.

So the crew embarks on its seven-year mission and is strapped into a huge space ship that is one-part huge bomb headed out to re-fuel the star and one-part escape vehicle. On the way it becomes a well-written human drama, a thriller and a film about spiritual journeys.

It was well-worth that rental fee and one of the best science fiction films to be released in the past 10 years.

Nit-picks:

• Premise: The science is faulty here. When a sun like our Sol starts to die, it’s doesn’t get dimmer and cooler, instead it expands and gets hotter short term. Earth will get hotter and eventually burn like a cinder before the sun burns out.
• Artificial gravity: I hate this crutch used in supposed realistic science fiction programs. For some reason when an airlock is re-pressurized, gravity magically appears on the space ship used. In the case of this film, the ship was large enough for it to be spinning, giving the crew at simulated centrifugal force “gravity”.

RATINGS:
Overall: 7 out of 10
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia
Sex: None
Violence: Minimal
Special Effects: Well done
Eye Candy: Attractive cast.

CAST:
 Cliff Curtis … Searle
 Cillian Murphy … Capa
 Michelle Yeoh … Corazon
 Hiroyuki Sanada … Kaneda
 Rose Byrne … Cassie
 Benedict Wong … Trey
 Chris Evans … Mace

[azlite]Danny Boyle,5,quiddity[/azlite]