Don’t worry, you know I have to review The Simpsons, but that’ll be tomorrow instead. Yep, it’s a double dose this weekend, to make up for the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to watch either John Travolta in drag or Adam Sandler trying to be a comedian last weekend. But this weekend I had almost an embarrassment of choices, and I’d been wanting to see Sunshine just because it sounded cool.
And it was cool, mostly. There were a couple of times, especially towards the end, when I felt like I was watching 28 Days Later, or maybe 28 Weeks Later, in space, but there was a reason for that: this film is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, both of whom worked on the aforementioned zombie movies in one capacity or another. And Cillian Murphy is in it as well (Jim from 28 Days Later), playing Capa, the physicist, and Rose Byrne is in it (Scarlet from 28 Weeks Later), here playing Cassie, who has some unspecified but apparently important job. They both sound just like they’re from the U.S., pretty much, even though they’re from Ireland and Australia, respectively.
The story here is that, a few decades into the future, the sun is dying. Not burning out, which it’ll do in a few billion years, but rather being disrupted by a theoretical particle that interferes with the normal fission of the sun. (Theoretical in real life, that is, not in the the movie. Heh.) The eight-person crew of the Icarus II is escorting a huge pile of fissionable material (basically a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan) to the sun so they can ignite it, drop it in, and basically reboot the system. At least, so the obviously unproven theory goes.

Don’t forget your sunglasses and the SPF 100,000 lotion!

What happened to the first Icarus, you ask? It was lost seven years ago, under unknown circumstances. The second Icarus is truly mankind’s last hope, as it took basically the last of the earth’s resources to build. And the ship is gigantic. Considering that one of the major issues they have to face is having enough oxygen for the crew, there are huge parts of it that should probably not be pressurized, but they are for some unexplained reason. Still, I hate to nitpick too much on sci-fi movies about things like that. There are just so many variables in your average sci-fi flick, you’d go crazy trying to smooth over every plot inconsistency. Besides, the geeky fans will find ways to do that retroactively.
The Icarus II has just entered the communication “dead zone” (of course) when everything starts to turn weird. They pick up a distress beacon from their sister ship, and, on physicist Capa’s recommendation (or as he puts it, wild guess), they detour to explore the wounded ship in hopes that two piles of fissionable material are better than one.
It was around this point that I was afraid, for a few minutes, that it was going to turn into a standard survival in space/under water/trapped on alien world flick, and it only narrowly avoided that potentially awful fate. But the cast pulled the script over that little problem, and I started liking it again. I don’t want to give away the exact problem, but let me just say here that the cast was great. Aside from Murphy and Byrne, we have Michelle Yeoh, who I always like, as Corazon, the botanist in charge of the plants that provide their oxygen; Chris Evans (Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four films, who somehow seems like a much better actor here) as Mace, a tough-guy pilot/astronaut; and Cliff Curtis (Fracture, Live Free or Die Hard), as Searle, the ship’s psych officer who can’t quite cure his own unhealthy fascination with staring into the sun. He’s really cool, always really believeable, I think. Because nearly every scene is on one ship or another, there are only eight other actors listed, including the woman who does the voice of the ship’s computer, but they’re all great. I suppose with so few roles to cast, you really take the time to get that right.
So this one gets three and a half idols. That little hiccup about halfway through keeps it from going any higher, but aside from that it’d probably be a four. It’s very low-key, mostly, more about the people than the events, which is good because it could so easily have turned into just another special-effects extravaganza. And it’s got some great opposites in it — there’s the huge empty void of space and the relatively cramped confines of most of the ship; the whole light-dark thing that Searle obsesses on; and the graphic realization that in space, you can freeze to death and be burnt to a cinder at almost exactly the same time. Yikes.

Or, You-Know-Who and the Bird Bunch. I have to confess right away that I’m really not a Harry Potter fan. The more hype the books got, the more determined I was never to read them. And I still haven’t, though from what I hear, that’s just as well here. The books keep getting thicker, but this movie is the shortest yet — though at two hours, eighteen minutes, ‘short’ is purely relative. The point is, I don’t really know the whole Hogwart’s mythos, and could never survive a Harry Potter trivia contest. I’m just trying to look at these as movies, without the hype.
That can’t be done, of course. It’s all hype. It isn’t such a bad movie in spite of that, though. Strangely, the effects are iffy in places — with all the money they have to throw at this film, everything should look more real than the person sitting in the next row, but sometimes it doesn’t. And I can’t figure out why they bother to have Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort — with all that makeup on him, it could be nearly anyone playing the part, and the poor guy’s just wasted. Maybe they should have hired someone cheaper and spent that extra money on effects.
Anyway, the kids have grown, and the problems are darker. Voldemort is alive and up to no good, but the Ministry of Magic (led by Robert Hardy as Cornelius Fudge — Robert always seems to end up as bad guys these days) is doing its best to hide the truth and make sure no one believes poor Harry. Imelda Staunton, as the scenery-chewing Dolores Umbridge (Rowling should have just given in and spelled it ‘umbrage’) is sent to crack down on Dumbledore’s treasonous scheme to take over said Ministry by instituting a series of ‘reforms’ at Hogwart’s to keep the kids in line. One of them states that boys and girls can’t ever be within eight inches of each other, which you know was a bad move. If anything’s going to make teenagers rebel, it’s a rule like that.
And rebel they do. Harry, Hermione, and Ron have learned about the grownups organization, the Order of the Phoenix, and now they’ve formed their own — a (co-ed) group of students learning all the magics that Umbridge has tried to suppress, and incidentally getting a lot closer than eight inches in the process. This secret school part is pretty cool, actually.
Speaking of cool, though, I think I’ve figured out the secret of the Harry Potter success, at least when it comes to the movies. I think a big part of the reason why I liked this movie as much as I did is because it reminded me so much of other movies. Not other HP movies, just movies in general, and a few books for good measure.

Pink = Evil

Umbridge, for instance, is a classic Stepford Wife. She’s always wearing pink and smiling even when she’s doing something terrible, and looks like a moving waxwork doll up until the end when she finally gets dirty and rumpled. (It should, by the way, be a crime to use as much pink as she does. Painting the stone walls of a castle pink is just wrong.) The Ministry’s whole disinformation campaign is completely 1984. The repressive school? Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Early on, as Harry and Mr. Weasley take a surreal little trip through the Ministry building, it seems a lot like a Monty Python sketch, right down to random bursts of flame. They even go a little Matrix-y, which was kind of a shock. I’m not kidding. There’s this hallway covered with black, shiny marble-like tiles, and they have a huge battle there that’s a lot like the huge gun battle in The Matrix that gave me one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. Only with magic instead of bullets, of course.
So how can it not be popular? There’s something for everyone! I just can’t decide if they meant to imitate all this stuff, if it was all accidental, or if I’m reading too much into it. It also helps that so many popular actors are back, too, of course — Emma Thompson is there, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and now I have to stop before I get carpal tunnel. You’ll recognize nearly everyone, that’s the point.
Of course the three kids are all back. Daniel Radcliffe is turning into a pretty good actor, and so is Rupert Grint. I never really liked Ron before, but he’s starting to grow on me. Emma Watson… not such a good actor in this one, I thought, but not too bad. She did the lighter stuff fine, the scenes where it’s camaraderie among the friends, but she seemed very stiff on the more serious lines. And the films are definitely getting more serious. The fights are scarier, the monsters are nastier, and Helena Bonham-Carter totally channels her performance in Corpse Bride to look really creepy. The giant spiders are still the creepiest — I forget what movie that was, because they’ve all blurred together — but this one has its moments. They borrow a little from The Mummy, too, with the bad guys turning into whirlwinds of sand. Wow, maybe I am reading too much into this…
Okay, no more parallels, just a ranking: three and a half idols. Not suitable for the younger crowd, and please don’t announce the names of all characters and creatures as they appear, like the woman behind me did. The important thing is that it’s safe for the non-rabid-Potter-fans like me, and entertaining even if you don’t know the name of Dumbledore’s best friend’s second cousin’s neighbor, who once invented a really cool spell.

Or, Die Hard times 4, which is what I hear some are calling it. It’s been a while since I saw any of the first three, but it’s entirely possible that more stuff was destroyed in this one than in all those three put together. I understand that audiences get jaded, and you need to add more thrills, but wow.
Still, it actually isn’t just a blow-things-up movie; there is a plot, and a decent one, though it will feed any paranoiac’s wildest fantasies. It’s based on an article called “A Farewell to Arms”, by John Carlin, a speculative piece written for Wired magazine a decade ago. You’d never know it was based on something that old, really. The technology may grow, by leaps and bounds, but the big problem that goes with it is, in the end, the same old problem: anything anyone can make, someone else can break.
And today, most of the making and breaking involves computers. Matt Farrell is a white-hat hacker (I’m not sure that’s the current term any more, but you know what I mean) who gets pulled unwittingly into the biggest computer game of all time. He’s played by Justin Long, whose first big movie role was as Brandon, the computer-geek hero kid in Galaxy Quest (I just love that movie), so I guess things haven’t changed much for him. Except he’s a little older and cuter — I think it’s the sarcasm, which I always find attractive.
Anyway, his security algorithm is being used by Timothy Olyphant, as the big bad villain, though he seems to consider himself just another working guy who happens to have the plan — and the capability — to shut down the entire U.S. infrastructure. After getting bits of code from a group of hackers, he starts killing them all so as not to leave any loose ends — always a good plan for the evil genius — but when they go after Matt, the Bruce himself is there, and he’s been told to bring Matt in alive. Guess who wins that argument?
Matt is brought before FBI Deputy Director Bowman (Cliff Curtis, who I also reviewed in Fracture — I like him, actually, he needs more roles) who is struggling against the chaos the cyber-terrorists are causing. (Has anyone else noticed that the bad guys these days seem to speak French a lot? I’m not sure why that is, but the trend continues here…) They shut down power grids, crash the New York Stock Exchange, and give every car at every intersection in every major city a green light, all at the same time. Ouch.
The government is scrambling to control the damage and save lives, and they have no time or resources to spare, really, for going after the root of the threat. So though Bowman does what he can, there’s only one lone computer hacker and one lone New York cop to stop Big Bad and his team. Guess who wins?
The audience was really into this movie, I must say. And there were some very good lines, and some nice little unexpected bits amongst all the rather predictable mayhem. Kevin Smith (Yep, that Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Silent Bob fame) has a nice little part as one of Matt’s fellow hackers, the Warlock, which I’ll bet he had fun with. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as the Bruce’s daughter Lucy, actually gets a pretty good part, which doesn’t often happen with the hero’s dependents, and never once falls into damsel in distress mode, which was absolutely great. Though the Bruce is still the Bruce, he does need some tough youth on his side.

The Bruce gives Matt his first lesson in the fine art of Dying Hard.

I was worried that he might seem too old for the film, actually, but that didn’t happen. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t pass out at times from the sheer abuse of all those landings on concrete, the various explosions he was caught in, and of course the bullet holes, but I would have wondered that about a twenty-something. That’s just the standard movie-hero toughness. But the character has the wisdom of experience, if not the energy of youth, and it really makes for a good sort of hero overall.
So, though I don’t want to support the Hollywood tendency to assume that if one explosion is good, seventy-three must be better, I’m giving this three and a quarter idols. It still has a bit much of that sequel feel to it, but considering what fourth movies in a series are sometimes like, I’m not going to complain about that here. I have a feeling that, like Kevin Smith, everyone just tried to have fun with it, which is the best way to make the audience have fun too, I think. The only thing I didn’t have fun with was all the computers blowing up. That’s making me nervous…

I was justing finishing off a pile of fragments I had on my desktop today. Wow, some seriously dark stuff…

• A Turn for the Worse Piano, Violin, and Clarinets. Years from now – this will be classified as a “fragment”. But it is still long enough to be useful for some applications
  
• Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet Sounds like someone is leaving and feeling bad about it.
  
• Grave Matters Holy lush strings! Good background. The front and back sections are independently loopable.
  
• Simple Duet A simple piano and violin duet. Still getting used to that cursed violin. Touchy, touchy instrument, that violin is. This one isn’t so depressing as the others.
  

Yep. I went to see a horror movie. That’s spooky right there. It’s based on a Stephen King short story of the same name, which I’ve never read, because to be on the safe side, I’ve always assumed Stephen King was too scary for me. He’s even scary in real life, apparently — I once knew a guy who grew up with Stephen King, and it sounds like that whole town was seriously creepy. But I really like John Cusack, and I survived The Messengers all right, and though I try to avoid seeing reviews before picking out a film, I couldn’t help but realize just how bad Evan Almighty was. So 1408 it was.
John plays Mike Enslin, a writer who, after turning out one of those “stunning debut novels” that “heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice”, sinks into the realm of the new age section and the bargain tables, churning out book after book on hauntings: the 10 Scariest Hotels, 10 Scariest Graveyards, etc. He’s never seen a ghost, or indeed anything that really required explanation, apparently, but he gives his readers what they want — stories about strange atmospheres and eerie noises.
But he himself wallows in depression, drinking a lot (which you’d think might make him see a few things right there) and wearing his cynicism and annoyance with the world like a suit of armor. He lives like a beach bum in California, and dresses kind of like a regular bum, though I did like the baseball cap that read “Paranoia is total awareness”. It’s all to help him forget the pain of the daughter he lost. When he gets a postcard of the Dolphn Hotel in New York, telling him not to go to room 1408, it’s all just part of the job to him, another place trying to build up their business with a good ghost story.

It’s just so hard to find a good hotel room in New York these days.

Samuel L. Jackson (Gerald Olin, manager of the Dolphin) is billed in this movie also, which is actually kind of strange. He has one really good long scene with John at the beginning, before things get creepy, and then one odd little scene later, and that’s it. He’s really intense, as always, and scary in his own right as he tries to persuade John not to stay in the room, but it seems like something of a waste of Mr. Jackson’s talent. Tony Shalhoub (Men in Black and TV’s Monk — he’s from Wisconsin, just like me!) is also here, but don’t go for popcorn, or even blink hard, or you’ll miss his bit of exposition.
You know that John ends up in the room, though, in spite of Mr. Jackson’s best scares. Even a thick file folder full of pictures of all the gruesome deaths, stretching back 95 years, doesn’t dissuade him — not because he’s particularly brave, but just because he doesn’t believe in anything anymore.
This was, overall, a pretty creepy movie. But it’s more creepy in the sense of a drunk’s visions while in the grip of the DT’s, or someone having a really bad trip. It’s a tour of John’s subconscious, really, and the horror there is different than the standard horror movie stuff– it’s all more psychological horror, except for a few instances when the film lapses into slight silliness. The “Claw Hammer Maniac”, for instance, really wasn’t as scary as you might expect from the name — he made me jump, but only because he popped up out of nowhere. The really frightening things were much more subtle — mints appearing on the pillow out of nowhere, the TV blaring to life for no apparent reason, and the scariest thing of all: repeated playings of “We’ve Only Just Begun”, by the Carpenters. Yikes.
But aside from a few effects that just didn’t work out as they should have, it was pretty good. I’m giving this one three and a half idols. The film’s almost wall-to-wall John Cusack, which is fine with me — he’s a really good, low-key actor, which is what this movie needs. He plays a great cynic who suddenly finds out there’s more left in the world than he thought — not necessarily such good stuff, but at least more than he’d had before. And the moral of the movie is simple: When Samuel L. Jackdson tells you not to do something, you listen to the man. Seriously.