it's plain to me why can't you see I don't need any therapy for this

I am totally in a movie mode lately. A couple from the 3-day weekend:

• Cloverfield -- 3 stars -- I'm in rollick's camp on this one. I found it an engrossing and enjoyable movie. There's one scene in particular, in the subway tunnels, that got to me pretty thoroughly squirming in my seat and crawling up the walls. I'm glad I sat towards the back; though I didn't experience any problems with the whole movie being shaky-cam, I can easily see how others did. I really liked that the movie had the balls to do certain things, and I was ambivalent about others, but on the whole there was nothing I really disliked. Apparently my opinion is not shared universally, however.


• Sunshine -- 3 stars -- I caught this one due to the good taste of dippy423, who enjoyed it in theaters and snapped it up on DVD as soon as it came out. Danny Boyle continues to impress me. Cillian Murphy, too. Also, once again with the "alternate ending" that was not so much. This is one of those interesting "soft" science fiction movies that asks you to accept 2 conceits without any real science to back them up (the first being that the sun is for some reason going out prematurely, and the second that staring at the sun makes you crazy.) thablueguy pointed out that you could use this movie as an example to teach Story, and he's not wrong, but in this case that's a strength rather than a weakness. It doesn't overreach and it executes extremely well on its premise.