Moon (2009)
Promotional movie poster(s)
I had a good time with this one, honestly! I was sucked in right from the start on this film. At first, it looked like a film that was going to explore the moon, but no; it took it beyond just that and ended up being another type of movie altogether!
Summary
The story of an astronaut who’s working alone on the moon, harvesting it for an apparently discovered new source of energy (not to mention Eco-friendly!), which is moon rocks from the far side of the moon, which contains the energy from the sun’s solar; I guess we’ll settle for that…not that we’ve come that far in technology yet. It has been three years of contract since Sam Bell (played by actor, Sam Rockwell) started working up there. He can’t wait to go home and see his wife, Tess, and daughter, Eve, after this. Everything seems to be going well, until he starts seeing visions of a woman in yellow, which leads him to accidentally burn his hand in hot water and crash his moon buggy into the…bigger moon buggy? I don’t know…he awakes to find himself in the infirmary, but also notices the panel in his station says the whatchamacallem big moon buggy is stalled and needs to be fixed. Despite orders from the big men, telling him not to risk going out there because he has no fully recovered, he goes out to find…himself…still in the crash site. It later becomes clear that one of them is a clone, and that for strange reasons, the rescue team that was dispatched by the company is still being sent. Exactly what is going on…things become more and more suspicious, as the two Sams discover a horrible truth…
“Sam Bell”, played by actor Sam Rockwell
Review
Of all the science fiction thrillers to come out, this one is from the Sundance Film Festival to a smaller audience than any other hyped marketed film out there during that year. This may just be giving away the film’s blueprint but it is a series of plot twists as the film plays on. What really is impressive is how believable and almost realistic the moon base looks and feels to us. It seems to be less than sunny on the moon, as all we see is blue outside, compared to inside the moon base. There is dust and tire tracks when the moon buggy rolls, and then there’s the lovable artificial intelligence computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey)! Every response the A.I makes is followed by a different smiley faces (smile, frown, confused, cry, etc.) and it moves around (well, it’s sort of like a crane, complete with a claw and all…yep, just like the one in one of those stuffed toy machines), putting it’s “hand” on Sam’s shoulder to comfort or even just holding up something for him. One can’t even resist referencing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” to the film, because…it just so happens the director is none other than David Bowie Jr., I guess. Clint Mansell (same person who did the music for Requiem for a Dream) also provides an echoing, eerie music to fit the mood of quiet space. Director Duncan Jones knows what he’s doing and doesn’t go as far as to add unnecessary, illogical plot devices like extraterrestrials to a simplistic, yet complex film (not that we don’t need Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars but…).
introvertedskunkreviews 