Moon

I saw the preview for this some time ago, and said to myself, "I have to rent this, right now." That was until I found out it was just being released in theatres and I said, "Shit, I have to see this in the theatre then." But no one would see it with me, no one, even the person I lived with said she wouldn't see it, she'd rather see "Rachel Getting Married" so I had to wait....till now.

It was worth the wait, this is Sci-Fi for adults. Like "Sunshine" before it, or "2001 A Space Odyssey" it takes the genre out of the play pen and into the boxing ring. No offense to "Independence Day" or other movies with that same pedigree but there is no comparison to these other films, and movies such as that give the whole genre a bad rap of being movies that aren't to be taken seriously.

There is far to much for me to give away, so I will just do my best in keeping it as mysterious as possible. This is a little in the future and a company has set up a base on the moon where they harvest Helium 3, its clean burning energy, and it has solved the Earths energy crisis. We meet Sam, he is the person on the moon that keeps the machines harvesting on the surface as well as sending the tubes filled with H3 back to Earth, he has a robot that helps him named GERTY, other than that he is alone, on the entire moon, alone.

He has a three year contract and it is about to end, he can go home. On his way to get a H3 canister off of one of the harvesters he gets into an accident. He wakes up in the infirmary with GERTY watching him. The bosses on earth wont let him leave the base until he's feeling better, he tricks GERTY into letting him outside to fix a problem with the exterior shell, but he really is going to go fix a stalled harvester, that's when he finds a man out on the Moon, who is passed out and looks just like him.

I'm not going to go into any more detail about what happens after that. I loved it, every minute of it, I thought that maybe since I had built it up in my mind so much it would have been lacking what my expectations were, but it didn't. For a first time director this is a marvel. Made on a mere 5 million the effects are great and the sets are imaginative and classic at the same time. There are so many cues to the classics, GERTY's eye is similar to that of HAL's in "2001" they even sort of talk the same. Parts of the base reminded me of "Alien" and "Aliens" There was even a sort of cleanness that I felt like it was from "AI"

Even with all these other influences the film stands firmly on its own two feet and finds a voice for itself. Choices like cutting down on CGI and going with models and forced perspective give the look that this is all real, and since those things are physical objects they are real.

Now onto the acting, Sam Rockwell who plays Sam Bell in it our main character was amazing, the likes of Tom Hanks having to keep the movie "Cast Away" going on his own with no other actors, Sam had to do the same. GERTY was only voiced later by Kevin Spacey, so other than a few images on some LCD screens he has on the base that he never really interacts with he does the entire thing on his own.

The Cinematography and Lighting was pretty much locked in, the set made it so they could only put the camera so many places and the lighting was for the most part built in. They still do some really cool stuff with the lighting, such as if an alarm is going off on the base the lights change to orange or red, just cool stuff like that.

As the answers unfold in this its not a huge surprise, but don't look for the twist, just sit back and enjoy it. The isolation and deadness of the moon really comes across in this. If you read this and saw, and liked "Sunshine" then I would suggest you check this out. For as good as this was I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more play, I only knew of a few places that were playing it and they were art house theatres, but with the likes of "2012" and other such trash I guess I'm not to surprised that this film would go over looked. 9/10 stars.

Director: Duncan Jones

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey