“Sunshine? What the heck is that?”

If these are your thoughts as you view the above movie poster, you wouldn’t be alone. For some inexplicable reason, this glorious science fiction thriller, from director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions) has, despite its title, been almost completely kept in the dark…at least here in the United States. I recall seeing a trailer once many, many months ago and was thus suprised to see it suddenly released this past weekend with no fanfare. This type of studio behavior generally signals that a load of trash is about to be released on an unsuspecting audience. With Sunshine, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Love is a many splendored thing…as is this delightful film about love, and the city of love.

Paris Je T’aime (Paris, I love you) is a grand concept. Take 20 directors and give them each five minutes worth of film time to direct a postcard of love to Paris. To further establish that this is indeed a love story to the city, each segment would be set in one of the twenty arrondissement municipals (municipal boroughs) into which the city is divided. Arrange these together with an overall framing sequence and voila!, romance is born.

It sounds deceptively simple, does it not? I would guess that it was anything but. One indication of that fact would be that two of the filmed sequences had to be left out of the final film as writer/director Emmanuel Benbihy and director Frédéric Auburtin could not integrate them into the final product to their satisfaction.

Thus, what one ends up with is 18 stories directed by 18 separate directors, including a cast that is fascinatingly diverse, that demonstrate the ecstasy and the agony of love while giving an honest look at the city which is the very personification of romance. And what a remarkable result!

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It only took one week…if fact, it took less than one week, and two movies to restore my faith in Hollywood’s ability to create memorable summer blockbusters. The first movie–Die Hard 4.0–the second, Transformers. I vaguely remember seeing Tranformers as a child but had no nostalgic connection to the series, so I went into this movie hoping for fun with big robots, an entertaining story, and hoping that Transformers would really be more than meets the eye.

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Do you ever get the feeling that someone, somewhere, has forgotten that movies are supposed to be fun? That they are entertainment? That the experience of going out with a group of friends, mortgaging the house for a hot dog and a box of Milk Duds, and parking yourself in a dark room for two or three hours can actually be exhilarating?

I think the cast and crew of Live Free or Die Hard, or Die Hard 4 for those keeping track, believed that people had indeed forgotten and so they made it their mission to return Hollywood film making to the fun category. Mission impossible? Not hardly, this film pumps fun into the action film genre and does so with a vengeance.

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(A Non-Spoiler Review)

Riding the crest of a wave of sneak preview tickets that flowed through the Kansas City Metro area recently, the gang surfed into a local AMC Theatre this evening to catch an early glimpse of the Silver one himself. Oh yeah, and that gang of superheroes, too.

One of the best ways to see films is before everyone else gets to see them, and to see them for free. It is icing on the cake when the film turns out to be one that you would have happily paid for. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of those films.

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