At The Movies

A few films I've seen recently...

1) The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

A foreign language film from Spain produced by Guillermo del Toro. It's about a woman (and family) who buys the orphanage in which she grew up to re-open it as a school for handicapped children. Strange things begin to happen...her sickly child begins to talk to unseen people...things go bump in the night...a strange woman appears and a series of murders years before is slowly revealed.

It's basically a ghost story but with much deeper subtexts of love and loss. And it works on both levels. There's a minimum of gore (only one scene really) and at least a half dozen moments that will make you jump. But there's a general overall creepy feel to the movie that makes the story more disturbing than at first glance...particularly as more and more plot points are revealed.

If you saw and enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone...you'll definitely enjoy this one. The same themes of human cruelty and bittersweet loss pervade it.

2) Sunshine

A sci fi film by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) about an international group of astronauts and scientists (Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh) on a mission to re-ignite our dying sun by firing a massive fission bomb into its core.

Sounds like standard sci fi fare, right? It differs though in visual style. Boyle has a distinctive look that sets this film apart. It's possibly one of the finest looking films of the genre since 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story has the genre standards of mission failure and how the crew adapts to survive and save themselves and continue their mission in the face of almost hopeless odds. Where it takes a twist or two is when they seek out another spaceship that had the same mission as theirs but disappeared. They detect a slight signal from it and proceed to try and salvage some parts so they can complete their own job. Things get a little creepy then.

The story also interjects the aspect of the crew's mental states...when they know that some of them will die...and how it hits each of them. Some react in a resigned way, some heroic...some almost have mental collapse...some angry...and at least one decides that perhaps they shouldn't succeed at all...that maybe it's god's will they are going against.

If you like above average sci fi with an emphasis on the human rather than the technological...you'll like this film.


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