New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Danny Boyle.
Cast: Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh
Description: In the future, the sun is dying, threatening to plunge mankind into total darkness. The only hope is to somehow re-ignite the star. A team of eight plucky astronauts - Cassie, Searle, Mace, Harvey, Capa, Kaneda, Trey and Corazon - embarks on a perilous mission to save mankind, but as the team's craft accelerates out of radio contact with Earth, something stirs in the void.
Country: UK. 2007. 107mins
The heat is on: Cillian Murphy as the one man who can set off a bomb and save the world in Sunshine. No pressure there, than.
A fine idea for a science fiction thriller. Fifty years from now the sun is dying. Mankind is suffering permanent winter. There's just one hope: a crew of eight young astronauts and scientists, financed by the global community, go on a mission to deliver a nuclear bomb that might reignite the part of the sun that is failing.
Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) wisely dispenses with wives and sweethearts as well as the mission headquarters back home so that Sunshine doesn't look like dozens of films we've seen before. It cuts straight to the chase, with the captain of Icarus II gazing at the sun, his otherwise vulnerable eyes protected by a computer that filters most of the brightness.
It is an opening which inspires a palpable foreboding and we soon learn that it is justified, since few of the crew are confident they will survive the trip, let alone manage to get back to the Earth they might just save. Their fears prove correct.
Stumbling upon Icarus I, the spaceship sent on the same mission seven years earlier, they argue about whether to ignore it, and thus forget about any survivors, or to make contact and use its bomb to augment their own.
When they decide on the latter plan, they find one survivor, horribly burned by the sun's rays and out of his mind. From then on things go from hairy to terminally awful. Even if they manage to save the world, there's no way they can save themselves.
Sunshine is brilliantly shot by Alwin Kuchler, showing us the creaking and clanking Icarus II and its brave but uncertain crew often in semi-darkness so that the sudden glare of the sun dazzles the eye. The music, too, mixed by Tim Fraser, adds to the sense that this really is a mission impossible.
But there is not much time given over to the characters. Cillian Murphy as Capa, the ship's physicist and the only man who knows how to detonate the bomb it carries, is the lead yet he has little more screen time than Chris Evans as engineer Mace; Hiroyuki Sanada as Kaneda, the ship's captain; Michelle Yeoh, the biologist who looks after the ship's oxygen garden, or Rose Byrne as the pilot of the Icarus.
The consequence is that we don't ever get to know them well enough. And it is not always easy to care about them individually, however well they play. A more serious faultline is that the story gets more difficult to understand in any detail, with whole sequences that make no sense whatsoever.
If it's the atmosphere that counts, it's maintained brilliantly throughout. If it's the plotline, however, you have to be a cleverer watcher than me to disentangle what actually happens and why.
Those who want more sense of what kind of film this is could consider John Carpenter's Dark Star mixed with Tarkovsky's Solaris, and bows to Ridley Scott's Alien on the way. But actually Boyle has fashioned an original and audacious work that is more or less its own thing, warts and all.
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I was truly impressed by this little film. The references to Solaris, 2001, Alien and Dark Star (Pinbacker) are heavy but this takes nothing away from a gripping, well acted movie. I think it was good to have no big stars involved because in doing this you've no idea on who's going to get off'd next, maintaining the suspense throughout. With this piece of work I think Danny Boyle has done with Sci Fi what he did with horror when he made 28 Days Later, re-igniting (no pun intended) a staid genre.
- Filmbuff, Middlesbrough, UK
I was really looking forward to this but sadly I was very dissapointed. I thought that continuity was lacking "how did that character appear from ship to the next?" When there was a problem on board it wasn't clear what the problem was and then repairs outside were necessary - but what needed repair and why? The ship was to be tilted - why? Too much guessing as the plot continued for the audience. Sorry but I was very dissapointed.
- Andy Parker, London - England
The plot may initially sound old hat and pure rubbish but make no mistake this is not another cheesy American action film - and that's precisely why its so good.
Similar to Solaris and 2001: a Space Odyssey - Special Effects are incredible and for moments you are really drawn into this world! As with any film a few minor faults but well worth a watch! A good film will always move you in some way and make you think when you come out the cinema - this certainly hit the spot for reasons I am still unsure of!
- Tommy, London, England
I expected a lot more from this film, found it boring and disappointing.
- Angela Bennetts, UK
Afternoon:
15°c
