There have been some retarded sci-fi movies based on doomsday scenarios. Pretty much all of them are boring, stupid or absolute crap. Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, The Core and probably others I've happily forgotten. The only one I ever cut any slack for was The Core, not because it was any good but because it's Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth in modern terms.

The latest to add itself to this list is Sunshine. Now, I asked myself why, why, why would someone try to make a movie of what seems the stupidest of all: The sun is going out, so we send a team of scientists to drop a nuke and get it going again! Besides, any Doctor Who fan can tell you the sun isn't going to go out for another 5 billion years.

I figured I was in for another dumbfest. For one thing, I couldn't figure out what legendary kung-fu babe Michelle Yeoh was doing in it -- she plays a botanist with Spanish name Corazon.

It didn't take long into the movie to realize I had terribly misjudged it. It was being intelligent. The characters were intelligent. The dialog was intelligent. Nobody was doing anything stupid. And the most amazing thing of all, this is true Sci-Fi. No aliens, no zombies, no mutating space viruses, no ray guns. Just a pure scientific "what if" and a rational playing out of that premise. Something you only find if you read books. Without the usual gimmicks it manages to tell a story with drama, suspense and even horror.

7 scientists are sent along with all the fissionable material left on the earth to the sun on the chance that what they are doing will save the world. As they get closer to the sun, communication with earth is no longer possible and the story is all about them. This movie in many ways brought up memories of 2001, Silent Running and even Dark Star. I didn't feel it was as dry as those movies but I'm sure some will disagree. I give it 4 toes up. From the same writer and director of 28 Days Later.

It turns out I even had to cut them slack on the premise. There is a theoretical relic of the Big Bang that could theoretically reduce solar fusion.