My Top 20 SF Films-17-Sunshine

I’ve recently dived into doing ”best of’ lists, so as I’ve explained, I’ve decided to do my top 20 SF films. This is my personal list, so feel free to disagree with it and of course, you’ll be horribly wrong.

Previously at # 20, The Matrix, 19, Seconds and 18, A Boy and His Dog.

At #17 it’s the film that made Professor Brian Cox famous, it’s Danny Boyle’s criminally underrated, Sunshine.

Sunshine tells to story of a crew sent to reignite the Sun to prevent it from dying by dropping a thermonuclear bomb in it. It’s a fantastic idea, and Boyle tries as hard as possible to present it as scientifically accurate as possible, but when your film is about a spaceship dropping a bomb into the sun.

It’s a fantastic tale, and one in lesser hands than Boyle wouldn’t have worked but by concentrating upon the human characters and leaving the effects to the minimum, Boyle manages to tell a great story which although it does fall apart when he decides to throw a bit of Event Horizon in at the end, the actual ending itself is lovely and haunting at the same time.

As a bit of SF it’s pretty strong. As an action drama it’s almost perfect with only the flutter at the end ensuring the film doesn’t rank higher on my list. It’s one of the few more recent SF films set in space that isn’t a Space Opera, or just shite, so for that it needs to be applauded. I will say though that if you get a chance to see it at the cinema do so as watching it in your living room just won’t capture the scale of the film in it’s larger moments, especially in that ending I mentioned.

Next time, we stay in space with some tripped out astronauts…