Moon (2009)

To barrow a bit from Roger Ebert's review of this same movie, hard science fiction films are an endangered species and this is one of that rare breed. Directed by Duncan Jones, the son of rock star David Bowie, Moon is the story of Sam Bell (played by the great Sam Rockwell, who essentially has to carry the entire movie and does a good job of it). Sam is coming to the end of a three year contract as the sole human crewmember of a mining operation on the far side of the moon. He doesn't have a lot to do really, mostly maintenance and filling reports, but he's been away from his wife and daughter for as he says 'far too long' and is just pinning for his last three weeks to pass so that he can go home, but then there's an accident. To say much more than that would be to spoil the movie, which given that its such an especially dry picture I will not risk doing, you need that mystery to keep going. The movie is very intentionally evocative of classic hard sci-fi films from the late 60's and early 70's like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and the original Russian version of Solaris. I will stress again that its dry, and its hard sci-fi, meaning that its not a casual shot-em-up or mear visual spectacle that constitutes the essence of that genera for so many 'main-stream' viewers. While I don't think the movie entirely works, and if your at all an aware viewer your going to figure out whats going on long before the lead does, I did appreciate it just the same, mostly for daring to give us something we don't get much of. I think between this and the short film included on the DVD we can see some definite promise in director Duncan Jones, lets hope something comes from it. 2 1/2 out of 5.