Sunshine

I want to get the inevitable complaint out of the way immediately. In the last third of the movie, there is a sharp turn taken, a la Event Horizon. Yes, it was jarring and yes, it was enough to make this movie not quite perfect. However, it doesn't change the fact that the film is in fact, nearly perfect.
Danny Boyle has brought something wonderful and visually arresting to the oft-neglected (and my favorite) genre, science fiction. He did the same thing when he tried his hand at horror movies, making 28 Days Later, one of my favorite movies of all time.
There are clearly nods to Kubrick's 2001 and Tarkovsky's (and Soderburgh's) Solaris, but that's ok! Those are two of the greatest films ever made, they deserve tribute. I loved the pacing of this movie, it was deliberate and elegant, in many ways I was reminded of the first half of Alien, where the feeling of a slow and steady burn adds so much to the tension building. The set design and visual effects are the best I've seen. So many of the visuals in this film are completely breathtaking, the solar shield, the sun itself, the inside of the "bomb", the inside and outside of the spaceship, I'm feeling nauseous with excitement just thinking about it.
The characters are very well drawn, and the casting, I thought, was excellent. I love Cillian Murphy (like, I'm in love with him, he's a beautiful boy) and Cliff Curtis and Michelle Yeoh..everyone's performance was flawless, even the human torch, Chris Evans was good.
Also, it has the most incredibly beautiful score since Clint Mansell's original music for The Fountain. This one is without a doubt on my Top Ten this year. Very, very near the top.