Review: Moon (a sci-fi not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey)

I haven’t heard much about “Moon,” but it’s been on the film festival circuit this year and won Best New British Feature at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It features Sam Rockwell (pictured) in the lead, so that was enough to make me go see it at our restored downtown State Theater here in Traverse City, Michigan.

I took my budding filmmaker almost-15-year-old son. Even though it’s rated R, it’s mainly for language, which he and I are both ok with. He knows he’s not supposed to swear, and I know he knows he’s not supposed to swear. 

The story follows an astronaut named Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), who’s finishing up a three-year contract for Lunar Industries, a company harvesting helium-3 from the moon and sending it back to Earth to be used as clean fuel. Sam’s been on his own for three years, and his only communication is via delayed-time relays from his employers and wife Tess back on Earth.

Sam’s only friend on the lunar station is a big computer named GERTY. It’s hard not to make comparisons to HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the feel of the movie is very similar. GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey, has that same even-toned voice of HAL and even says similar things, such as “maybe you should take a tranquilizer.” I’m sure they must have included lines like that to pay homage to the class 1968 Stanley Kubrick film.

As you might imagine, after three years by himself with only a computer to talk to, Sam’s ready to go home and resume life with Tess and their baby daughter Eve, who was born just before he left the planet. But as the end of his contract approaches, strange things start to happen. Sam gets into an accident with the lunar harvester, and when he wakes up, GERTY says that a rescue team named ELIZA is headed for the moon to clean things up. Not only that, Sam finds a very unexpected visitor on the lunar station.

It’s a mystery-sci-fi-thriller with a lot of twists and turns. My son and I sort of knew where things were headed, but the ending took us by surprise. It’s not a high-action movie, by any means, but the story is interesting and gets more intense towards the end. And Sam Rockwell does a great job holding down most of the movie on his own. I’ve only recently become a Sam Rockwell fan, but he’s a great actor whose films I look forward to seeing.

If you like sci-fi space movies, check out “Moon” and let me know what you think.

Image: Sony Pictures Classics, 2009