Moon

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Moon

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Moon

Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Matt Berry, Robin Chalk, Dominique McElligott, Kaya Scodelario, Malcolm Stewart, Benedict Wong

Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resou...( read more  read more... )rce that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

Id: 11021480

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Moon Recent Reviews
  • sitenoise
    December 8, 2009
    sitenoise
    I don't know if the science fiction elements of this reach any hifalutin heights (an Aliens-esque greedy galaxy corporation blah blah, cloning blah blah) but the surface play out of it is fun. The film looks good in all its sparseness, so no complaints there, but the real treasur...( read more)e of this movie is Sam Rockwell. It takes him a while to get going while the film is creating its context but as soon as his place in the world is established and he's split in two, he soars, so convincing in his random deterioration he doesn't seem like he's acting a part as much as putting up with the things that are happening to him. The ending is a little abrupt and if you want this to be some big statement about something you may be disappointed, maybe not, but for a film with one guy in it, it's a great performance piece.

    sitenoise at the movies: Moon [2009]
  • AgentLexi2132
    November 27, 2009
    AgentLexi2132
    ''I hope life on Earth is everything you remember it to be...''

    Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that...( read more) has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

    Sam Rockwell: Sam Bell

    Just two years ago I was immersed, impressed and tantalized by Danny Boyle's shimmering spectacle Sunshine which provided human drama and resulted in being an intense thrill of a rollercoaster. Two years later Duncan Jones releases Moon; a low budget, human drama, set out in space featuring Sam Rockwell(Frost/Nixon); whom happens to be one of the under-rated actors in film today. All of these attributes should mix perfectly to create a film that's highly emotive, beautifully acted and a sight to behold but is this moon landing a giant leap, or just a small step?

    An astronaut miner extracting the precious moon gas that promises to reverse the Earth's energy crisis nears the end of his three-year contract; makes an ominous discovery in this psychological sci-fi film; also featuring the voice of Kevin Spacey as computer robot assistant GERTY.
    For three long years, Sam Bell has dutifully harvested Helium 3 for Lunar; a company that claims it holds the key to solving mankind's energy crisis.
    As Sam's contract comes to a close, the lonely astronaut contemplates returning to his wife and daughter down on Earth, where he will retire early and attempt to make up for lost time. His work on the Selene moon base has been enlightening; the solitude helping him to reflect on the past and overcome some serious anger issues...but the isolation is starting to make Sam uneasy. With only two weeks to go before he begins his journey back to Earth, Sam starts feeling strange: he's having surreal visions, and hearing disjointed sounds.

    Let's state the obvious: Moon looks sublime. Similarly to Danny Boyles Sunshine, this low budget spectacle uses effects to enhance the story rather than eclipse it. Mix with some harrowing shots of the environment and you've got a film that dually looks fantastic and, thanks to Clint Mansell's(The man behind the scores of Requiem for a Dream & The Fountain) superb score, Moon sounds great, and unlike the moon itself atmospheric.
    Sam Rockwell is a versatile actor, his range is absolutely phenomenal. One moment he is relaxed and friendly the next he's ready to pummel you into submission in a fit of angry temperament...but let's not spoilt the faceted performance.
    This is an Oscar worthy performance from Sam!
    My only major discrepancy with Moon was with Kevin Spacey as GERTY(A distant relative to HAL maybe from 2001?) whom does an exquisite job, but sometimes distracts you from the realism that the film strives for. However, all of these elements merge; displaying some fantastic glossy sci-fi. It's the story and the direction that leads me to believe that this is among the greatest films of 2009.

    The story is told at a steady pace. The film never compromises and the pacing feels organic, and its this slow pacing that helps generate that feeling of isolation. The filmmakers cleverly, never relent from showing you a deserted hallway; calling it eerie or uncomfortable is a severe understatement. So much so that once the film decided to give us answers you're so involved they seem personal not just to Sam but to us the audience as well. Moon never strays from pulling on your emotions; a phone call to earth makes for one of the most emotional moments of the piece. You might not contemplate that Moon is indeed the sun of this year, indeed Sci-fi is not everyones cup of tea...yet Moon is addictive to any audience; simply because it is not just a sci-fi piece. It's a drama and a story about moralistic questioning...Is cloning humane? or cruel? Is isolation or being alone maddening in time? Can robots have empathy and friendship with humans? Moon is a long list of questions and deep discussion.

    Overall, Moon is a faceted diamond in so many regards; it replicates Si-Fi in a way not seen since Alien, Blade Runner or 2001: A Space Odyssey. The direction is methodical, clinically precise mixed seamlessly with the multitude performance of Sam Rockwell. An eerie, disturbing and moving story, but not without occasional bursts of humour(''I'm cold''...''you're sitting under the fridge''), Moon is a refreshing antidote to the unintelligent action-orientated futuristic pieces which has dominated cinemas in recent years. For these reasons alone Moon takes it's place, as one of the highlights and deepest films/stories of 2009.
    Simply put: Moon is a radioactive tampon, which will Rockwell your World, so definitely check it out.
  • PvtCaboose91
    November 21, 2009
    PvtCaboose91
    "I wanna go home..."


    Speaking from a thematic perspective, Moon is the sci-fi masterpiece that The Island could have been had Michael Bay not opted to turn it into a brainless action extravaganza. In many ways, Moon (the directorial debut of Duncan

    ...( read more) Jones - otherwise known as David Bowie's son) is an affectionate throwback to an age of classic, cerebral sci-fi motion pictures (such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner); it's invested in areas of storytelling patience and hefty psychological investigation rarely explored in an era of Star Trek and Transformers. It's instead a simple story rich in ideas that explores several areas familiar to sci-fi fans: the concept of artificial intelligence, where bioethics is heading, and whether prolonged isolation can cause psychosis.


    Moon kicks off with an advertisement for Lunar Industries: Earth's #1 provider of clean energy. This energy comes in the form of a radioactive isotope which is mined on the moon. Sam Bell (Rockwell) is the sole employee at the company's base on the dark side of the moon where he is responsible for supervision and routine maintenance of the mining equipment. As the film opens, Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract. Due to a mechanical failure, there is no direct link between the lunar station and Earth; Sam can only send and receive recorded messages in order to communicate with his wife, daughter and bosses. An intelligent computer called GERTY (voiced by Spacey) provides Sam's only form of direct communication. But with only very little human interaction, and all of it indirect, he feels that three years is far too long to be isolated. Soon enough, Sam makes a series of discoveries that alter his understanding of his job, his life, the universe, and everything.


    The less said about the meatier parts of the plot, the better. Without divulging spoilers, Moon eventually transforms into a morality tale that questions the notion of what's real and what isn't; what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. These questions propel the film towards an unsettling third act which suggests what might happen to humankind if certain technologies were fuelled by corporate greed. More importantly, as the questions pile up, the tension slowly and methodically builds...even after Sam unearths his most shocking discovery. Like Sam, a viewer will spend most of the latter half of Moon attempting to figure out what exactly is going on.


    Moon exhibits a lucid influence by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the nods are both frequent and uncamouflaged. Certain shots recall 2001, there's an effects sequence set to a piece of classical music, and there's the computer GERTY; a virtual clone of HAL (the nuances and intonations of Kevin Spacey's vocal performance even seem visibly influenced by Douglas Rain's voicework for 2001). For emotions, GERTY displays a smiley face that turns into a frowny face or even a crying face every so often, like the cheapest special effect the filmmakers could conceive of. But it works - and this is one of the many examples of the filmmakers' ability to make the most of their meagre budget. To create a science fiction movie with only $5 million would be difficult, yet Jones pulls it off with aplomb. Moon doesn't feature groundbreaking CGI, but it nevertheless remains enthralling from a visual standpoint. An incredibly believable lunar landscape has been constructed - and when the action shifts to the surface of the moon, there's a flawless blend of practical effects and subtle CGI. Sam's living quarters possess a familiar futuristic design that's bestowed with a realistic, lived-in quality almost foreign to this brand of sci-fi (notice, for instance, how filthy GERTY is, and that the areas Sam inhabits seem worn). Sedate camerawork courtesy of cinematographer Gary Shaw as well as Clint Mansell's transcendent, utterly haunting piano score also compound the sense of unearthly isolation.


    Director Duncan Jones (formerly known as Zowie Bowie - yeah, I'd have changed my name too) has previously directed commercials. This is his first feature film and it's a promising one. For a film debut, Moon is a surprisingly ambitious effort since sci-fi is a route rarely taken by neophyte directors tackling projects without a huge budget or studio backing. By addressing intimate subject matter and keeping the film's setting mostly within the confines of the moon-base, however, Jones is freed from a majority of the warped conventions that typically define mainstream science fiction. Moon is not Star Wars-inspired space opera; it is provocative, intelligent stuff that takes the elements of "science" in science fiction seriously. If there's a flaw, it's that the film wants to say more than it has time to. In a 90-minute timeframe, the film attempts to make comments about corporate greed, the human mind, the consciousness of technology and other human advances which can't be discussed without heading into Spoiler Land. While these notes are hit well, the film tends to hit them too fast, leaving an audience to contemplate and realise it all only after they've finished watching it. Important plot points are revealed in the blink of an eye as well, and while you attempt to put it all together, the story progresses on-screen.


    A terrific performance submitted by Sam Rockwell keeps a viewer caring throughout the narrative. Because there are virtually no other human characters in the film, much of the success of Moon rested solely on the shoulders of Rockwell. And it works! Rockwell (a character actor who has featured in such recent films as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Matchstick Men, but has not yet managed to break through into genuine Hollywood stardom) deserves to be an Oscar contender given the weight of the material he manages to nail here - the actor delivers an affecting and credible portrayal of a loner who yearns for home, with later plot developments allowing him to show different facets of the role. Not only does Rockwell keep an audience rapt (much like Tom Hanks did for much of Cast Away), but he also puts a human face on some hefty themes.


    While Moon begins like a hodgepodge of various other sci-fi flicks, director Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker are able to breathe new life into these familiar elements; creating something unique, fresh, mesmerising and exhilarating. The conclusion is perhaps a bit too tidy, but it gives the story a sense of narrative resolution while also suggesting that larger issues are a long way from being resolved.


    Moon is truly a contemporary horror movie which eschews a wearisome slasher mentality to explore the nature of identity and the perversion of human life through scientific advances and corporate skulduggery. It asks proper, stimulating questions without being cold, aloof, pretentious or even remotely boring. And it works as all the best sci-fi does - by employing special effects to complement a genuine, thought-provoking human narrative. It's not that there's anything wrong with escapist entertainment like Star Trek, but Moon is closer to the expectations of die-hards when they hear the term "sci-fi". It's very different from glossy sci-fi blockbusters - and far more satisfying.
  • rezpatriot
    November 19, 2009
    rezpatriot
    This film can appeal to anyone, and I assume thats why I liked it so much. Its not too obvious and is SCI FI but its a film not wrapped up in its own illusion and is just a very good film.
  • mrpopcorn
    November 11, 2009
    mrpopcorn
    "The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself"

    Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped ...( read more)diminish our planet's power problems.

    REVIEW

    Sam Rockwell gives a bravura turn as Sam Bell, an astronaut serving a 3 year contract for a lunar excavation assignment to recycle its resources for Earths' plight of energy crises in the not-too-distant-future and finds his dwindling few remaining days to be the most difficult: is the encounter with his sudden body double/clone a figment of his cabin fever indulgences or something far more sinister? Like an epic tone poem of the classic "Twilight Zone" but with some more prickly underpinnings (i.e. playing God) are at the epicenter of this intriguing and very cool sci-fi flick that echoes of "2001" (thanks largely to the robotic computer system, GERTY, an emoticon sporting co-hort ? voiced with sonorous calm by Kevin Spacey ? a kissing cousin of HAL) yet stands alone as a singular tale told with style and grace by rookie filmmaker Duncan Jones (nee Zowie Bowie, yes, son of "Major Tom" himself, David Bowie). One of the best genre flicks in years.
  • dipa89
    December 8, 2009
    dipa89

  • battleaxeofdoom
    December 7, 2009
    battleaxeofdoom
    Not what i expected, but still pretty awesome
  • LTidemar
    December 6, 2009
    LTidemar
    Fantastic sci-fi drama with a very interesting plot! Slowly played out but spellbinding in a way.
  • spikedwall
    December 5, 2009
    spikedwall
    2009 has been a good year for science fiction in movies. District 9 covered the action flick, with huge plot holes to boot. Moon, on the other hand, is rather something new. The trope of clones and identity has been dealt with before, but Moon's execution is pitch perfect. Couple...( read more)d with Clint Mansell's score (highly reminiscent of Cliff Martinez's score of Soderbergh's highly underrated Solaris adaptation), it's a treat. Movies like these don't come along very often.
  • EddieGunner
    December 5, 2009
    EddieGunner
    very nice SF drama :=)
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