Sleep, Little Baby

If there's only one thing you can say about Danny Boyle, it's that he refuses to be easily defined. The visually-distinctive director has been making films for almost thirty years, and unlike many artists who have been working for that long or longer (*cough* Spielberg *cough*), his work has never felt like a copy of his previous efforts or constricted by a lack of risk-taking. He's happy working in any genre, whether it be drama (Trainspotting), adventure (The Beach), horror (28 Days Later) or science fiction (Sunshine), never spiting a story because of where or how it takes place. And of course he has now broken through to mainstream audiences with his heavily lauded (and fairly lucrative) Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. Those movies engaged audiences, drove them to the theaters, and had them conversing with one another for weeks after they had finished watching.

Trance is not like either of those films. Instead, it's more of a throwback to Boyle's early methods of storytelling, and in more ways than one: it was actually an idea brought to him way back in 1994, after he had finished filming thriller Shallow Grave, by screenwriter Joe Ahearne. While he didn't take it on at the time, Ahearne did eventually turned the screenplay into a television movie in 2001. But Boyle never forgot the tale, and recently he finally pushed to get it made. And while it's certainly flown under the radar here in 2013, Boyle makes enough of an effort to ensure you should check it out in its inevitable DVD release.

In modern-day London, Simon (James McAvoy) has assisted a robbery crew in their theft of a priceless painting. But when the gang's leader Franck (Vincent Cassel) inspects their haul, he discovers that he only possesses an empty frame, the art itself having gone missing. Suspecting treachery on Simon's part, he attempts to torture the location of his prize out of the mild-mannered man, only to learn that Simon has no memory of hiding the painting due to a head wound he suffered in the heist. Desperate and angry, Franck hires the services of hypnotist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) in an effort to get Simon to remember. But when retrieving that memory becomes more difficult than intended, it will take all of Elizabeth's effort and all of Franck's patience to see this painting doesn't disappear forever.

As would any movie having to do with the human memory, Trance is definitely very complex. Much like Christopher Nolan's Inception, there are multiple layers of reality happening all at once, with nothing counted on to be as it seemingly appears. There are vast departures from that 2010 blockbuster however, not the least of which is that while Inception found itself quite bloated and unbelievable by the end, Trance's goals and machinations are far more simple. Character motivations are relatively simple, making them more easily sympathetic and understandable. What remains a nuisance, however, is the storytelling itself, with Boyle waving the camera around and moving between past, present, dream and reality with a madman's ambition. Sometimes it does work, but at others it's a bit too trippy to really be taken all that seriously.

At least the characters are interesting enough to keep us enthralled, even when the story gets a bit away from us. James McAvoy is an excellent, genre-defying actor who absolutely had to be top-notch for this movie to be good, and he passes that test with ease. As a performer, he has to do the most transforming, as the character we see at the end of Trance is a far cry from the one we are introduced to in the beginning. Rosario Dawson's Elizabeth is also intriguing, though marred by bland personality through most of the film. From moment one we're aware that something about her is off, but a good performance and excellent writing make sure we're never truly sure until Boyle is ready to let us in on the secret. Vincent Cassell is by far the weakest of the cast, his thick French accent unable to convey most proper emotions in English. However, as a standard thug/bad guy he remains effective, a violent foil to McAvoy's more timid protagonist.

But despite some clever trickery and some really good acting, there just isn't enough here to recommend Trance to the average movie-going public. Boyle has made some real head-turners in the past, and he certainly has enough twists here to keep the story from becoming stale and unwatchable. However, there's not enough intrigue to make it worth the ticket price, especially when the ending will leave you scratching your head in confusion and frustration. This is certainly an okay movie, just not one I would recommend going to the theater to see. Instead, check it out on DVD, where the minuscule budget, bare bones story, and derivative elements will play much better on a smaller screen. It's not bad, just not up to Danny Boyle's usual level of excellence.

Good Morning Sunshine, The Earth Says Hello...

It's quite often that I miss films in the theater. I may be looking forward to a movie and it may simply pass without my knowledge or ability to get a chance to see it, or it may simply be too far down my list of titles to see that by the time I get around to it, it's out of theaters. This happens often, and usually the only way to rectify that situation is to nab a rental copy and hope your home setup is good enough to watch movies on. This happened three years ago for me with Sunshine, the 2007 sci-fi film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland about a group of astronauts and scientists sent on a mission to save the planet.

The problem is the sun, which by the year 2057 has diminished in it's brightness, leading to the Earth undergoing a new Ice Age. Icarus II is the second ship to attempt this dangerous mission, to deliver a "stellar bomb" to attempt to reignite the sun and return it to full brightness. The first Icarus failed it's mission seven years ago after losing contact with Earth, and if Icarus II fails there will be no further Icarus missions, as Icarus II has used up the Earth's supply of fusion materials. The team of eight includes physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy), who is the only crew member who can properly operate the bomb; Kaneda (Hiroyuki Saneda), the ship's captain; hotheaded engineer Mace (Chris Evans); Harvey (Troy Garity), the ship's communications officer and second in command; biologist Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), who maintains the ship's oxygen garden; Cassie (Rose Byrne), the pilot; Searle (Cliff Curtis), the doctor and psychological officer; and Trey (Benedict Wong), the navigator. They've been living together en route to their destination for about fifteen months, and are on the last leg of their journey. Nerves are starting to fray due to the insularity of the mission and solar radiation cutting off communication from home. However, the estimates of oxygen supply and food look good, and the people aboard are fairly confident that they have enough resources to return home once their mission is complete.

Then things begin to go horribly wrong.

And to think, in three years he's on Lost

One of the reasons I wanted to see this film was all the good names attached to it. Danny Boyle made one of my favorite zombie films 28 Days Later, and it would be just one more year until his triumphant Slumdog Millionaire made him a superstar. Alex Garland may have also penned the screenplay for The Beach, which is almost unforgivable, but he is a talented writer with interesting ideas, and I loved his books The Beach (for which the movie was based) and The Tesseract, and he also wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later. Chris Evans, though I'd seen nothing by him at the time, was an up-and-coming star. Michelle Yeoh was a superstar both here and at home in Hong Kong. All you needed at this point was a believable (or at least theoretically possible) premise and scenarios to make the whole thing salable, and thankfully, that's what Boyle does in telling this story.

No, in this film she doesn't rounhouse kick anyone

The ensemble acting cast does a fantastic job of portraying the everyday lives of deep space astronauts, each with varied quirks and breaking points. Murphy, as the brainy scientist, plays up his relative social inexperience well, as he speaks on a more blunt and scientific level than most on the ship. Evans plays the more typical military type, and though that type of character has little imagination in fiction, Evans does good work with it. Yeoh and Saneda make good mentors, Saneda's captain willing to risk anything for the mission to succeed, and Yeoh cultivates a believable relationship with her work, the oxygen garden she builds almost like her own baby. Byrne and Wong are both good, though neither is given too terribly much to do. Wong's character does go through a believable mental breakdown (as do most of the characters, to some degree) but neither really steals the spotlight from the others. Garity makes a great transformation from strong second in command to mewling child when adversity hits, and Curtis is possibly the best performer of them, a psychologist who seems to have an unhealthy fascination with the brightness of the sun. With this well balanced cast, we really get attached to most of them and are upset when the bad things that eventually happen come to be.

Wow, just... wow.

The special effects here are also larger than life, as they would have to be in most outer space filmography. The design of Icarus II is intricately designed, and looks amazing against the setting of deep space. Sunlight and solar flares twinkle realistically, and explosions, decompression and scorching do a great job of showing the dangers inherent in space travel. That said, some of the best effects of the film are appreciably better on a small scale, as most of the scenes are set in the almost claustrophobic halls of the ship. Boyle was inspired by Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot in this way, and also has noted inspiration from other famous works, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and the original Solaris.

Unfortunately, that's where the good in Sunshine ends. The final act is an unbelievable and oddly mediocre change of pace for the film, like something out of Event Horizon instead of the film I thought Sunshine was. To say anything more would spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film, but it seems lie the change might have been made to reach out to a wider audience. Also, so much derivative material means there's precious little that Doyle or Garland thought up on their own, making this film somewhat less special than it could have been. There are parts you will see coming a mile away, people you will know to be killed long before it happens, and only sterling acting and amazing effects prevent these parts from being such trite rubbish as they threaten to be.

Murphy literally plans to touch the sky here

Ultimately, I liked Sunshine. I do wish I'd seen the film in theaters, especially since it was a bomb and didn't make back it's $40 million price tag due mostly to nearly nonexistent marketing here in the States. Seeing it finally three years later however let me appreciate it for what it is, however, not what it was supposed to be then. In the end it's an interesting take on the "saving the world" tale, with a great ensemble cast and enough gritty storytelling to make the shoddy ending bearable. If you haven't seen it yet, I definitely recommend it.