Captain of a sinking Ship
When I pick a DVD box, more than the cover, I look at the back for the Director than gawk at the who is starring, or who is the Heroine (ok scratch that… except for Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Natalie Portman… and so on 
. And the last 2 movies I picked made me wish I looked at reviews before picking the movie.
Danny Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’ & Antoine Fuqua’s ‘Shooter’. I loved their ‘28 Days Later’ and ‘Training Day’ respectively.Both movies tried to appear more than what it was - maybe it has to do with my expectations.
Sunshine (2007):
Sunshine was billed as an unique sci-fi movie on the same vein as "2001 A Space Odyssey". It had an interesting premise - Sun is Dying, and a group of 7 astro’nots’ are aboard a spaceship to drop a nuke into the Sun. They had a chance to do something unique here - But it was the same painful recycled sequences: Intro to Inmates, Fight Among Inmates, Major Tech Problem, Becomes a bigger problem when they try to fix it, Starling new Discovery…rinse repeat, and a July 4th fireworks climax (camera, sound, BGM, actors, equipment all spewing sparks and fireworks) - and a "what?" ending. There was nothing new - even Armageddon (similar lines) had a emotional thread to it. Seems they took the cool new problem, and wrapped a cheap thriller around it.
[3/5]
Shooter (2006):
Next was even more ordinary - Antoine Fuqua’s ‘Shooter’ - Till the end of Act 1 - it held promise. Mark Walberg was superb as a patriotic sniper - but it was downhill from that point on. And in an attempt to salvage the train-wreck, the director introduces new ‘techniques’ - usually in movies, when the villain goes on an exposition on why he did what he did - the hero secretly records it on tape (yes, screenwriters seem to still think thats clever) - here the hero does that and burns the tape (?!) - and even lets the baddies escape, and surrenders to the FBI - before another ‘clever’ stunt. But wait, any self respecting action thriller cannot end like that - so we make a painstaking journey into the villains lair - and all the villain’s are sitting in comfy leather chairs in front of a fire *sigh* - how much dumber the screenwriter/director thot we were?
[3/5]
So if not the director - whom to trust? (rotten tomatoes? I hate to form an opinion before watching the movie - if I can help it)
just like the alpha dog DVD cover, shooter’s dvd cover repels me for some reason. didnt know it was that bad.
the reviews of sunshine seem to talk about how philosphically the movie has been created by danny and so on. that’s pitch now, phlisophical thriller.
its bad for Antoine Faqua movie… ‘Training Day’ was raw and superbly shot (that bathtub scene & climax monolog) - so this is not in the same league. This one’s like ‘Enemy of the State’ - except that we’ve already seen ‘Enemy of the State’
Yeah - he has tried to do some philsophico babble in ‘Sunshine’ - but it wont make any sense “if its Gods will to destroy Sun - then who are we to mess with God” - that kinda angle.