Moon (2010)

Dir Duncan Jones

Written by

Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey (voice)

In the not too distant future, the energy source Helium3 is being mined from the surface of the moon. The sole engineer running the mission, Sam Bell (Rockwell), is about to end his three year contract, and is looking forward to getting home. He has been alone on the moon, with his only companion – the AI computer GERTY (voiced by Spacey), and has begun to hallucinate people, such as his wife.

On a routine inspection of one of the excavators, Sam has a horrible accident, and awakens days later with little memory of it. Not long after, on another outing, he comes across the crash site – and finds himself still inside. When ‘Sam2’ brings the injured ‘Sam1’ back to base, they are informed of a unbelievable series of information that leave them stunned.

As their investigation of this grows, they plan an escape back to Earth, but ‘Sam1’ starts to grow sicker and sicker, and their time is growing shorter and shorter, especially when a rescue arrival team are being sent to them from their central base; they fear the worse.

Very well Directorial debut by Jones (son of David Bowie), with Rockwell being the only primary actor on screen, and at times twice in one scene. The emotion he displays between the two Sam’s differs immensely between scenes, and he shows here what a gifted performer he is. They are both wary of one another to begin with, and as the story progresses

The effects are pretty solid, considering the shoestring budget of $5m (source imdb & Wikipedia). The entire film is mainly contained to one set, and is considered a Bottle Movie.

Paired with an exciting score by Clint Marshal, there is some very moving pieces of piano instrumentals during the more dramatic moments of the film, and it moves to dynamic and fast paced during some moments of the film that is also fast paced.

I highly recommend this film (and it isn’t tarnished by Spacey’s ‘history’)

4.5/5