February 03, 2012

Moon (2009)

This is a film that I have heard about and it sounded quite interesting. It has similarities to Silent Running and its about a man who is all alone on the moon with just a few weeks to go before he can go home. Moon came out in the same year as JJ Abrahms bought Star Trek back to life with a shiny and very glitzy adventure. Both deal with space, admittedly in different ways but its interesting to get two space stories in the same year. Star Trek had a $150million budget whilst Moon had just $5million. The film sees Sam Rockwell who plays Sam Bell who is coming to the end of a three year mission on the moon. He is totally on his own and only has recorded messages from his pregnant wife as a link to the Earth. His only companion is a robot (voice by Kevin Spacey) and at the beginning of the movie Bell has an accident and when he wakes up but cannot remember anything and so begins the

The film’s start has a feel of the Tom Hanks film castaway about it. There are large parts of the film where there is no dialogue and just Sam Rockwell walking around the moon base. It’s once the accident happens and it shows the there are multiple Rockwells that shows that is a bit more than Castaway. It’s credit to Sam Rockwell that despite being the only person on the moonbase he manages to make the film seem heartbreaking as well as engaging. The film spends a lot of time asking some interesting questions about what it is to be human and is everything what it seems and it shows that intelligent films can work in 21st century cinema.

Sam Rockwell is in the star role and the only thing I had seen him in before was The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy and this was a completely different film obviously. But I found Rockwell’s performance to be utterly compelling and only gets better as the film. His interaction with GERTY is very well played and despite one being a robot voiced by Spacey, the relationship works quite well. Kevin Spacey’s voice is perfect for the role as GERTY because he has a very dry and at times dull voice and I think that his role made the that bit more interesting.

Moon is a very nice film that uses its $5million budget very well. It might not have had as much exposure as Star Trek but I felt that this film was more satisfying and the hype that I had heard about this film before hand was spot on as it was a film that had a quite a small cast but managed to fill every second with a lot of drama and Duncan Jones’ first film is a triumph and shows that you cant achieve a lot with a small budget and it’s a taste of movie making from the good old days but given a modern day twist.

4/5

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