I watched it again last year, having sort of enjoyed it when it first came out (I was the right sort of age). It's quite an uneven film, to be honest - there's a lot of talent both behind and in front of the camera, but it never really materialises into anything particularly important or, by the end, even all that interesting. The weird sequence that's part Apocalypse Now, part video game, towards the end, has not aged at all well (though from this review in The Guardian it would seem to be quite faithful to the book, which I think I have actually read but remember nothing about!).
I'll have to rewatch. I saw it when I was much younger too.
In defense, I think "weird" is overly dismissed in film. The intent of some sequences like this is to make the audience surprised or uncomfortable (the soundtrack at Do Long Bridge in Apoc Now?), which gets dismissed as a director simply making bad choices.
My personal bugaboo is programmers chuckling knowingly at the CG in Hackers: "That's not what code looks like."
Well, no shit Sherlock, maybe it was an artistic choice to try to convey the experience of debugging to an audience who wouldn't be able to understand C on the screen?
> Well, no shit Sherlock, maybe it was an artistic choice to try to convey the experience of debugging to an audience who wouldn't be able to understand C on the screen?
Man if that's what debugging is like for you, I need to get ahold of whatever you're on when you crank up gdb. For me, accountants poring over tax returns and corporate statements is much closer to the reality of it.
I'd definitely describe my flow state as much less about characters and more a synesthesia-eque mental visualization of data structures and interfaces.
May I ask what you find compelling about Sunshine? I really, really wanted to love the film and I did for the first 2/3. But it felt like the final act lost its way.
Maybe I just like Garland's films but not his signature. If you have other recommendations I'd be interested.
