Moon

Moon is a thinking person’s sci-fi movie (read: not Transformers) focused on an isolated employee harvesting new age fuel components on the far side of the moon. For all that it echoes classics such as Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon does ultimately emerge a unique little gem paying generous homage to a series of predecessors (and occasionally quoting their language to mislead its audience). If you think you know where the film is going when you sit down to watch, you are wrong. Or psychic. It has an unknowable trajectory that while not as major or as epic as the classics above, is fairly satisfying and worthwhile.

Sam Rockwell gives a tour de force performance that requires him to flex his character chops and master more than a few special effects complexities that might otherwise have led to a stiff or unconvincing performance. Most gripping about his work is the common reality he captures in a setting so defined by the surreal and unimaginable. He makes spaceships on the moon seem perfectly normal, the usual 9 to 5 daily grind. There’s no question that the whole film hangs on his shoulders, for more than one reason.

Director Duncan Jones adapts a wonderfully minimalist style here that keeps the characters and story at the forefront, a rare achievement in modern sci-fi. Baring the occasional quirk, plot hole, or misstep the film is a real treat that is as fresh as it is familiar, particularly to an audience who recalls an earlier, less CGI-dominated era in American science fiction.

Grade: B+