Quentin Tarantino keeps hinting that once he has given up directing he will become a writer, not just of epic character-driven, narrative-bending novels but also of film criticism. I imagine that one day we will see him host his own kind of Siskel & Ebert sydincated movie talk show.
And he would be damn good at it too. Right now, I’m putting my hat in the ring to be the co-host of Holmes & Tarantino: At The Movies!
As part of a Sky Movies “take over” that Quentin did to promote Inglourious Basterds last month, the always game director filmed an introduction/analysis of eight films he wanted to screen for the channel, the most passionate being his take on Danny Boyle’s 2007 sci-fi offering Sunshine.
His review is 1000000% accurate and I agree with every damn word of it. Even to what he calls “a betrayal” of a third act which in my original review, I opted to use the word “sickening” instead.
There is a moment 2/3rd’s into the film, where you are completely in the hands of the storytelling masters and the tale they have crafted when BOOM… like the thundering Titanic after it hit the iceberg, the movie quickly, without any kind of logic, sinks and fumbles into an afterthought. It’s great ideas laid to bury under the surface. I was left cringing by the creative decisions in the final 30 minutes and personally, I felt rather sick, as a movie I thought was on it’s way to being a classic Science Fiction movie along the same lines as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, completely committed cinematic suicide and fell to the bottom gutter depths of a horror/slasher movie in space.
It went from Kubrick like visuals to Paul W.S. Anderson’s stupidity in a matter of seconds, as it changed from wanting to be 2001: A Space Odyseey to Event Horizon. Why the film was allowed to make such a stunningly stupid transition is the only thing I kept asking myself as I walked out of the cinema.
Sunshine ended up forgetting about the plot and the interesting characters they had setup started making decisions that were completely out of the context Boyle had formed or even worse they were just discarded pretty much altogether.
You can see Tarantino review There Will Be Blood, Taxi Driver, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, his own movie Death Proof and apparantely he reviewed Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho… but that one I can’t find on Youtube.
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First of all SPOILER ALERT!
If you haven’t seen this pile of dogshit, disguised as a movie (and I envy you if you’ve been spared such torment!) but plan to see it anyways, then skip this post.
I come not to praise Sunshine but to bury it! Just ignore what Quentin and Matt say. Here’s a REAL review of Sunshine.
I saw Sunshine a few months back. It was pure shit. Small wonder it never got a theatrical release.
This movie was the very epitome of a non-event. They fly to the sun for the sake of “re-charging” it. Most of the movie running time is spent merely “getting there.” And we need to follow this journey, why?
Oh, let me guess, because everything goes wrong. How original!
At least Michael Bay had half of Armegeddon take place on the rock itself. Sure, it was crap, but at least he tried.
Danny Boyle, who I SURE Matt will try to say is better than Bay, couldn’t even be bothered to put out that minimal effort.
He must have written the script on some toilet paper while he was in the john.
Anyways, the plot is totally predictable and paint by numbers. The members of the crew die off one by one due to mishap after mishap. Gee, just like The Core, Armageddon and every other shitty “end of the world” SFX flick of the last ten years.
Will these bastards EVER find a narrative that’s not a total boring-ass cliche?
I kept waiting for something worthwhile to happen, to make it where it was worth while to watch these idiots sit around talking about how they’re going to restart the sun, but instead all I get is more boring dialogue. I guess for British filmmakers this is what passes for “character development.”
As it turns out, there had been a prior mission sent out to restart the sun but those guys “disappeared” but lo and behold, our intrepid second mission just happens to find that very lost ship on their way to the sun. The ship is without power and abandoned. Well, good thing that ship didn’t just drift off into space or anything, the way a real de-powered and idle vessel would.
Guess Boyle blew so much on the SFX he couldn’t afford a scientific adviser or to use common sense.
And besides, having the first vessel not pop up like a fart would ruined this boring and stupid plot device. By the way, the crew decides to stop their save-the-world mission to explore said other vessel. That’s right, the fate of mankind hinges on them completing their mission, but rather than do that they decide to go site-seeing.
That makes TWO –count em TWO!!!!– space missions peopled by total morons.
Guess the government was really using this is an opportunity to send all the inbred retards into deep space where they would all die. At least that part worked out!
But the only thing more dumb than this movie was the morons who made it. CLEARLY Boyle and his retarded cohorts realized their movie was boring as shit, because they decided to double down on the exciting-as-cold-turds, dumb-as-hell premise/handling by suddenly tossing in a space mystery. Sci-Fi save-the-world bit turns into run from the deranged space killer.
Don’t get me wrong, this pile of puke-worthy celluloid needs ALL the personality it can get. But now the personality went from boring to groan-out-loud schizo and boring.
If this is what Quentin considers good movie-making then it’s no wonder that he’s been churning out shit for 8 years. He doesn’t have a clue what a good movie is.
So no, the third act plot “twist” was not where this movie went wrong. Yes, that part was hackneyed and totally without purpose. But then again so was the previous two hours.
I mean, to have it where a deranged religious zealot, who apparently doesn’t discover religion until he gets out into space and sees the sun closer-up, decides to wait out in space (millions of miles away from his precious sun that he allegedly loves so much!) and wait for the second ship so he can slip aboard, and waste his time killing people instead of basking in the glow of his precious sunlight, oughta be roundly condemned.
This movie seems like it was written by a 6 year-old and directed by a 15 year-old who took parts from the worst sci-fi movies and art house cinema of the last 20 years.
I guess Matt keeps mentioning this movie every chance he gets because it was done by British filmmakers and he feels the need to support the home team. The same reason he pimps the “28 Days/Weeks” series, even though that rip-off of Romero’s FAR superior works started off as low-budget gore and went to low-quality crap.
Matt, if you’re going to continue this unholy mission to support British filmmakers with all your might, can’t you at least support the GOOD ones?
Actually Matt’s far from alone in ‘pimping’ the 28 Days/Weeks films. They’re generally well-liked here and abroad, as I understand it.
Out of interest, who would you say IS a good British director working now?
28 Days Later was shot on what looked like a mini-DV cam, and it was so low-budget anything would have been awesome. Is that what qualifies as a success these days? …shudder…
It wasn’t total crap, but let’s no turn it into some sort of quality production. It wasn’t.
28 Weeks Later DIED over opening weekend. The reviews were pure crap and the movie moreso. It had better production values, (not that that was a high bar) but FAR worse story –and that WAS a high bar of crappiness to get over!
So when you say 28Weeks Later was “well liked” I have to ask why that never translated into box-office.
And as for British filmmakers that I like: Martin Campbell is okay, though I gotta say his Bond films are about the only thing he’s done that I like.
Of course Chris Nolan and Stephen Norrington. Paul Greengrass, Ridley Scott and occasionally even his brother.
Alan Parker used to be okay, but IMHO he hasn’t made a worthwhile film since Mississippi Burning. Unless you consider Evita to be a good film, that is.
Sam Mendes of course makes the list. Not for American Beauty. I hated that ode to gay-ass pedophilia, but he partially redeemed himself with the instant classic Road to Perdition and Jarhead was also a worthy effort. I think it was more about marketing than anything else–somebody convincing themselvse that a film about the 1991 Gulf War would resonate during the second Gulf War.
Nonetheless he told a good story.
So there’s plenty of Brit filmmakers who do quality work. I can’t think of any screenwriters per se, but then again most Brit screenwriters don’t write movies for American audiences anyways.
The problem is that Britain’s filmmakers do works that are too damned weird. They reek of European influence and the kind of art-house quirkiness that makes it where foreign films simply don’t translate, even in their home countries. Unless a film is made by one of the pros I listed above whenever someobdy tells me I’m about to watch a film made by some Brits I groan, because I KNOW it’s going to be amateur night.
How can Britain produce such amazing actors with such consistency, but not directors?
A few examples. Guy Ritchie. He’s been making the same damn movie for the last 15 years. And his flicks have as much depth as a birdbath. He’s got potential, but his creative “voice” is clogged by thinking himself too clever by half. Somebody must have told him he was ” the next DePalma,” and then later on “the next Tarantino” when in truth he’s just a guy who got notoriety by banging Madonna, and used it to get studios to give him modest sums to made shitty films.
The scripts he picks simply are’t smart enough, and he seems to think that because he makes a movie every 2 weeks that somehow that translates into good moviemaking.
Somebody who loves him needs to pull him aside and explain that it’s all about quality, not quantity.
Paul WS Anderson is the Brett Ratner of Britain. Nothing short of a silver stake through the heart can be adequate enough punishment for his crimes.
So no, I don’t think much of Danny Boyle or his movies. And that’s Danny boy’s fault. If I see people praising what is clearly crap then I don’t think it improper for me to call a spade a spade.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on quite a lot of this – I don’t think you can judge how good a film is by box office alone, and I actually LIKE a lot of the art-house Euro-weirdness – I’m a big fan of Greenaway and Jarman, for example, and love the strange, stripped-back vagrant cinema vibe of Patrick Keillor’s single, static camera plus voice-over ‘Robinson’ movies.
Oddly though I do agree with a lot of the directors you like, and certainly agree re. Ritchie and Anderson.