movies on the plane

Sunshine:  Director Danny Boyle and star Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) are the main attractions in this film about a future where the sun is dying and needs to be reignited by a “payload” – a gigantic glowing bomb of dark matter – to be hurled against it by the spacecraft Icarus II (and yes, there is an Icarus I).  This is an idea-driven picture if ever I’ve seen one.  Of course everyone knows by now the creepy psychological impact of space travel (at one point when Murphy’s character, Capa, starts talking about the ethical ramifications of encouraging a suicidal crewmate to kill himself in order to increase the amount of oxygen available, another character sarcastically cuts him off with, “oh, what, our loss of humanity?” because it is old news).  This movie really isn’t as intently psychological as Solaris and Contact (what is it with space movies having one-word names?) – it’s more of an imaginative experience.  I’m wholely convinced of Danny Boyle’s talents (including naming the captain of the Icarus II Akira Kaneda, which as a fan of the Akira movie, I am sure is not a coincidence, and does fit very well with the overall vibe of this movie) and he turns them to max power here – it actually makes you feel like you’re in his characters’ heads, living their lives – you feel their fear settle in, you feel their lack of oxygen, the desperation and hopelessness of their mission.  It is genuinely scary quite often.  Maybe my experience was somewhat intensified by the atmosphere of watching it on a small, engrossing screen in the near dark and rumbling hum of another spacecraft – an airplane – crossing over another wide, deep gulf – the Pacific Ocean.  But I felt very transported to the mission of delivering the payload no matter what the cost even as the Icarus II starts to fall apart.  I basically sat there huddled in my blanket with my hand over my mouth the whole time.  Some of the mechanical twists and turns that drive the plot are hard to follow, especially if you lose half the dialogue due to shitty airplane headphones, so I had to look a few of them up.  For that I wouldn’t mind seeing this movie again, even if being on more grounded settings would probably detract somewhat from the experience. – Highly Recommended.

Jindabyne:  A really strange Australian drama about a semi-rural, semi-pastoral lake community.  Some fishermen stumble upon the body of a young Aboriginal woman and keep fishing without reporting it, and racial tensions come spurting out.  A small, subtle, haunting movie, vaguely spiritual. – Recommended.

Little Children:  Kate Winslet and various other a-list actors (and a narrator!) in a film about the dissatisfaction of suburban life that sort of doubles up on itself and confuses you in the end with its “message”, but maybe that’s the point, that there is no message and there is no morality.  It’s more aged, softer, less pop than American Beauty – there’s not really any nationality associated with this movie that I could identify.  Basically it’s a nuanced Madame Bovary, both sympathetic and not sympathetic.  The really innovative stuff, however, came with the resident pedophile, newly released from prison and living on the block.  On the one hand he’s repulsive and creepy and not somebody you want around your children.  On the other, the community’s zealous, paranoid response is also sort of repulsive.  So yes, it’s one of those movies where you look at everything and then want to pull away.  Yet it’s so well-done and well-acted that you don’t feel cheated. – Recommended.