Sunshine
I missed this film at the cinema, and really wanted to see it on the big screen to get the full effect of space and the sun. And after watching it on the small screen I really wish I had managed to because I know I missed some of the visuals epic majesty.
The film's plot is quite simplistic. The sun is dying and the last hope for mankind's survival is for a team to travel to the sun and detonate a bomb into its core, to restart it and save all of mankind. One ship was already sent but contact was lost and the mission's completion time came and went without the result needed. No one knew what had happened to the first ship, and so in a last ditch attempt the remaining resources of Earth were used to create a second identical ship to try again. If the second attempt failed then that was it, the end of Man.
The style for most of the film is slow and thought provoking, creating a tension reminiscent of previous classics such as 2001. The crew grow tired of the wait to reach their destination, with obsessions with the sun growing for some of the crew, while others fought each other of decisions taken.
The discovery of the original first ship sent on the mission brought some similarities with the beginning of Event Horizon, and sadly other horror aspects were also introduced right at the end of the film, which I thought were not needed. Instead creating a philosophical thought provoking chain of events to show the magnitude of the suns power compared to the task they had to undertake, as well as questions of religion and mystical forces could also have been used, instead of the way it was instead portrayed.
But even with the unnecessary horror elements and some other minor flaws it is still a film worth seeing.
9/10