Posts by John Dubrawa

Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is about the struggle for hope woven into a tale of a survival in the far reaches of outer space. Sunshine is a taxing experience for the viewer, requiring a great deal of patience because of the slow pace,  the result of the film being almost entirely character-driven. As Sunshine pushes forward, the characters descend deeper into the depths of sheer depravity, and their decisions, while seeming inauspicious to some, are never implausible. That the characters make such calamitous decisions is a testament to the film's superb writing, which never turns its heroes into clichés or sullies the plot with thrills for the sake of thrills. Sunshine is a taut sci-fi thriller that knows its place and stands its ground.
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For a film that is only 82-minutes long, Unholy has too much plot. It dabbles in the occult, government conspiracies, brainwashing, suicide, time travel, and Nazism but doesn’t have enough time to explain how these pieces fit into the grander scheme of the movie’s ever-running puzzle, likely because there is no answer. For a movie with so much happening, it’s also slow-moving, uninteresting, and dull. It contains a few formulaic scenes that are fright-inducing, and then repeats them over and over again until they become cringe-inducing. There is some decent acting to be found, at least as decent as the material will allow; the dialogue doesn’t stir the audience’s interest and not even the characters can seem to follow the plot.(read more...)