markbernstein's Journal

Movie recommendation: Moon
For all the genre movies being made these days, hard science fiction films are still rare. Intelligent ones, rarer still. I had to go out of my way to see Moon (the nearest theater playing it was an hour's drive away), and it was well worth the trip.

The plot is, by sf standards, basic. Sam Bell is the only human resident of a moon-based automated mining station. He's only a couple of weeks from the end of his three year contract, when there's an accident. And then . . . well, anything more would be a spoiler.

Thanks to a smart script by Nathan Parker (especially noteworthy these days for having the courage to leave some things up to the viewer to figure out), solid direction by Duncan Jones, and a truly outstanding performance by Sam Rockwell, Moon succeeds almost completely. Does the science work? I honestly don't know enough to say for sure, but I was able to suspend disbelief while watching. There are a couple of fairly minor questions that remain unanswered. But overall, I recommend searching it out.

Advertisement