Slow week for me on Netflix as unfortunately Netflix opted to pass me over for my longstanding movie requests and instead send me a couple of movies that I didn't want as much but put in my que just because they were new or newly released on HD DVD or Blu-ray disc.

One of those movies was the science fiction/fantasy based movie Sunshine by FOX/Searchlight.

I put up a review of the movie over on Amazon.com that I'll expand on a little here.  Hopefully it'll help save you time deciding whether or not this movie is worth a rental or purchase.

One reviewer over on Amazon pretty much gave the movie away with an overly descriptive hint of what my wife and I also found to be a problem with this movie.  That reviewer plopped a huge spoiler right into the subject line, potentially ruining what some players might see as a good thing in the movie.  I'll try to avoid doing that myself, even as I dance around the issue a bit here, but at the same time I'll try to do my best to help you decide if the movie is worth seeing.

First, let me say up front that the visuals and effects in the movie are pretty impressive.  This is also one of the first Blu-ray disc titles to make use of Profile 1.1 features including Picture-in-Picture commentary and behind the scenes extras.  In that regard it works fairly well. For those without Profile 1.1 players, you can see the same extras in a non-PiP mode instead so you aren't left unable to see that content if you wish.

Now, if you haven't figured out yet that if I have to talk about the visuals and effects first, and the extras along with that, is not a great thing when it comes to a movie review, then actually you might really like this movie.  Talking about everything but the movie first is normally an indicator that something isn't quite right with the movie and would be a very predictable way of knowing that things aren't going to be great here.

Which bring me back to talking about what the movie looks like, right?  (Gosh, it seems like I'm trying hard not to talk about the movie, right?)  Alright, lets get it out of the way here.  What is the movie really like?   Well, it starts out as an interesting science fiction/fantasy story.  Years in the future the sun, the star in the center of our solar system, is burning out.  Without it, humanity will perish so plans are made to save humanity by reigniting the sun.

That all sounds pretty cool, right?  Well, it at least offers the start of a decent sci-fi/fantasy movie with a reasonable hint of intrique and thriller built into it (hey, space flight is always dangerous, an a mission to reignite the sun would surely be frought with peril, no?), but in the last approximately 1/3 of the movie it seems to display the worst elements of it's apparently schizophrenic personality and veers into a direction I really wish it would have avoided. (And my wife shared the same thoughts about it).

The direction and writing (screenplay) were almost too smart, and trying too hard not to be predictable so it instead became predictable by turning into a completely different type of thriller.  In doing so, it turned what might have been a 4 or 5 star movie into -- at best -- 3 stars instead.  Maybe more like a bleh 2 stars.  I wish the film was better and had taken a different approach for the last 1/3 (give or take) of the movie. No, I'm not looking for Armageddon, or a host of other similar movies, but I hoped for better than what this movie turned into and there were certainly places to take the film that would have offered generous amounts of thrills, intrique and peril without devolving in the way this movie did.

Sadly, this one seems destined to be a middle of road sci-fi tale at best.  Some people will absolutely love while others hate it. I enjoyed a lot of the film, but found myself so unhappy with the last portion of it that I can't recommend that anyone take their time watching it.