One Small Step...
Well if there's one thing nice about getting a three day weekend, it's the fact that you can sit down and watch some movies. Over this weekend I plan to see at least three movies, so I'll start the rundown with the first one I saw.
I have been eager to see the movie Moon since I first saw the commercial on Hulu. Moon tells the story of Sam Bell (played by the fantastic Sam Rockwell), a man who has been mining the moon for a rare element call Helium-3 that now cleanly and effectively powers over 70% of the Earth. He's signed a three year contract to be alone on the moon, tending to the machines and sending off the capsules of Helium-7 back to the company who hired him. His only companion is a AI computer named Gerty (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) and recorded videos of his wife and baby to keep him going. As his three year contract comes to a close he starts to get vivid hallucinations and he crashes and lunar rover into a Helium-3 harvester that has been malfunctioning. What happens next can only be described as "It gets worse".
This is a thinking man's Sci-Fi and I for one applaud the return of the deeper side of this genre. No longer do we have to deal with superficial sci-fi movies or even ones with blatant themes (I'm looking at you, Avatar). Sci-Fi has always been a genre that allows for speculation and it requires the right atmosphere. And boy this does movie deliver. The only human we see in the setting is Sam Bell and yet we see what is effectively Sam Rockwell giving a powerhouse one man show. "Acting" opposite of him is Gerty, and part of what makes the film is Kevin Spacey's amazing vocal performance as he manages to be both subdued and "artificial" while giving a touch of sentience and humanity to his robotic character. It's amazing just how much you come to depend on Gerty and his emoticon facial screen. In fact the scenes with Gerty were the part of the movie that made me cry and though that may sound silly, it's anything but in the end.
As for the setting, we never see anything but the station and the rover and it gives you a perfectly claustrophobic feeling. Just like the characters you feel trapped in an inhospitable landscape, high lighted by stunning effects of the moon scape the the earth hanging in the sky like some painful reminder of what Sam is missing. The inside of the rover and station have such a weight to them they don't look like a set, they look like a living space that's kept clinically clean. In fact there's such a scientific weight I'd classify this in the small genre of Hard Sci-Fi. Go ahead, snigger. Got that out of your system? Cool. What I mean is it's highly based on scientific reality. Besides a small bit of fudging on artificial gravity inside the base we have a very realistic example of what this sort of mission would look like. All in all Duncan Jones, the director, did a stunning job with such a minimal amount of script and the soundtrack by Clint Mansell is perfection in audio form.
There's little to complain about on this film, it's a tour de force from Sam Rockwell and though it's slow at times, it makes up for it with a whole lot of heart. If you are a fan of a thinking man's movie, or a good sci-fi it doesn't get much better than this. In fact movies like this give me hope. Between District 9 and Moon we have a new trend of movies taking the more realistic approach to the genre of sci-fi, be it first contact or economic struggles. That said, I will be shelling out cash as this movie needs more love. So go out there, watch this movie and spread the love. Or if you know me... lets get together and watch it.
And hell, if you're reading this then you know you'll watch this with me. And yes, this was a shorter review, I didn't want to spoil anything. You really really have to see this movie not knowing anything about the plot.
Until next time.
Be Seeing You
-Kin Reynard
I have been eager to see the movie Moon since I first saw the commercial on Hulu. Moon tells the story of Sam Bell (played by the fantastic Sam Rockwell), a man who has been mining the moon for a rare element call Helium-3 that now cleanly and effectively powers over 70% of the Earth. He's signed a three year contract to be alone on the moon, tending to the machines and sending off the capsules of Helium-7 back to the company who hired him. His only companion is a AI computer named Gerty (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) and recorded videos of his wife and baby to keep him going. As his three year contract comes to a close he starts to get vivid hallucinations and he crashes and lunar rover into a Helium-3 harvester that has been malfunctioning. What happens next can only be described as "It gets worse".
This is a thinking man's Sci-Fi and I for one applaud the return of the deeper side of this genre. No longer do we have to deal with superficial sci-fi movies or even ones with blatant themes (I'm looking at you, Avatar). Sci-Fi has always been a genre that allows for speculation and it requires the right atmosphere. And boy this does movie deliver. The only human we see in the setting is Sam Bell and yet we see what is effectively Sam Rockwell giving a powerhouse one man show. "Acting" opposite of him is Gerty, and part of what makes the film is Kevin Spacey's amazing vocal performance as he manages to be both subdued and "artificial" while giving a touch of sentience and humanity to his robotic character. It's amazing just how much you come to depend on Gerty and his emoticon facial screen. In fact the scenes with Gerty were the part of the movie that made me cry and though that may sound silly, it's anything but in the end.
As for the setting, we never see anything but the station and the rover and it gives you a perfectly claustrophobic feeling. Just like the characters you feel trapped in an inhospitable landscape, high lighted by stunning effects of the moon scape the the earth hanging in the sky like some painful reminder of what Sam is missing. The inside of the rover and station have such a weight to them they don't look like a set, they look like a living space that's kept clinically clean. In fact there's such a scientific weight I'd classify this in the small genre of Hard Sci-Fi. Go ahead, snigger. Got that out of your system? Cool. What I mean is it's highly based on scientific reality. Besides a small bit of fudging on artificial gravity inside the base we have a very realistic example of what this sort of mission would look like. All in all Duncan Jones, the director, did a stunning job with such a minimal amount of script and the soundtrack by Clint Mansell is perfection in audio form.
There's little to complain about on this film, it's a tour de force from Sam Rockwell and though it's slow at times, it makes up for it with a whole lot of heart. If you are a fan of a thinking man's movie, or a good sci-fi it doesn't get much better than this. In fact movies like this give me hope. Between District 9 and Moon we have a new trend of movies taking the more realistic approach to the genre of sci-fi, be it first contact or economic struggles. That said, I will be shelling out cash as this movie needs more love. So go out there, watch this movie and spread the love. Or if you know me... lets get together and watch it.
And hell, if you're reading this then you know you'll watch this with me. And yes, this was a shorter review, I didn't want to spoil anything. You really really have to see this movie not knowing anything about the plot.
Until next time.
Be Seeing You
-Kin Reynard