Moon is darn good science fiction.
Moon (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:157
Fresh:140
Rotten:17
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Boosted by Sam Rockwell's intense performance, Moon is a compelling work of science-fiction, and a promising debut from director Duncan Jones.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for language.
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:17-07-2009
Synopsis:
It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a...
It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive.
Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.
Suddenly, Sam’s health starts to deteriorate. Painful headaches, hallucinations and a lack of focus lead to an almost fatal accident on a routine drive on the moon in a lunar rover. While recuperating back at the base (with no memory of how he got there), Sam meets a younger, angrier version of himself, who claims to be there to fulfill the same three year contract Sam started all those years ago.
Confined with what appears to be a clone of his earlier self, and with a “support crew” on its way to help put the base back into productive order, Sam is fighting the clock to discover what’s going on and where he fits into company plans. --© Sony Pictures Classics
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Director: Duncan Jones
Director: Duncan Jones
Screenwriter: Mark Bowden, Nathaniel Parker
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for Moon
This eerie drama harks back to sci-fi movies of the late 60s and early 70s that explored inner as well as outer space.
Storywise, Moon fails to live up to the promise of its premise. There's plenty of atmosphere, but little gravity.
In brief, stark moments, Duncan Jones' movie makes plain how awful it is to be so solitary, how utterly impossible it is to consider this existence a "living."
All this wouldn't matter if Sam Rockwell didn't anchor this cleverly claustrophobic spectacle.
If Jones felt any first-film jitters, they are nowhere to be seen in his debut film, the technical proficiencies of which belie the relatively low budget.
Moon is, quite simply, an astonishingly good debut, supremely confident and assured.
In much the same way we take for granted the fact that science drives our lives in countless and invisible ways, Moon takes a satisfyingly pragmatic approach to the extraordinary.
What makes this science-fiction/thriller really work is that it favors a more cerebral style of storytelling. There are clear nods to such sci-fi classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Universal questions: How is it that Sam Rockwell, one of the finest actors on the planet, has yet to get the notice he deserves? And how could you miss this stellar feature?
For a 'paranoid thriller' to work, the paranoia has to rise and rise until a climax at the finale, not give away the game halfway in.
Ultimately, Moon isn't quite the transcendent experience that it clearly strives to be. But as ambitious science fiction, it achieves liftoff.
Esoteric and a little frightening, a serious-minded sci-fi rumination for viewers who strive for more out of their genre pieces than pyrotechnics and jive-talking scraps of metal.
Comparisons to "2001" or even Ridley Scott's "Alien" aren't far-fetched.
Raises all the right and most interesting questions about what it means to be human in the manner of some of the best science fiction.
Compellingly haunting human tale of survival that just happens to be set in outer space.
Moon is first-rate science fiction, tackling such issues as identity, individuality and the effects of isolation on the psyche and the soul.
Watching Moon is kind of like seeing a booster rocket thrust seventies' sci-fi films deeper into orbit.
Directed with a sure hand by Duncan Jones, Moon is the anti-Transformers, a science fiction tale that owes as much to fiction as to science.
Latest News for Moon
October 08, 2009:
Duncan Jones talks Moon, Sam Rockwell, and Mute
Space. Once film's final frontier, over the years sci-fi has sometimes been the domain of cliche and inferior riffs on past glories. All the more surprising, then, to discover a... More...
September 15, 2009:
Concept Art for Moon Director Duncan Jones' Mute ![]()
Director Duncan Jones, whose Moon has gone down as one of the finest sci-fi films of the year, has posted concept art for his next film, a thriller entitled Mute. Like Blade... More...
July 20, 2009:
Five Favourite Films with Duncan Jones
Duncan Jones has done the impossible -- tell a smart, engaging and entertaining sci-fi story on a modest budget. In Britain. As his debut feature film. No wonder everyone's... More...
June 28, 2009:
Edinburgh 2009: RT's 10 Must-See Movies
The Edinburgh Film Festival has come to a close and Rotten Tomatoes thought we'd make a traditional look back over all of the films playing at this year's fest and present to... More...
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