Moon (2009) Review

"I wanna go home."
-Sam Bell



Before I get into the film, I just want to say there will be spoilers ahead.  I give this movie a recommendation and highly suggest you watch it before reading an further.  The less you know about this movie, the better.  Enjoy.




In the not so distant future, Lunar Industries has solved the energy crisis by farming helium-3 from the rich soil of the moon.  The base in nearly fully automated, run by only one human, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell).  His only companion is a robot, GERTY (Kevin Spacey).  As Sam approaches the end of his three year contract, he starts having hallucinations, his sanity deteriorating.  After a bad accident, he discovers Lunar Industries and GERTY have been keep secrets from him, and he may not be as alone as he thought.


What Works:

Sam Rockwell is an absolute gem of an actor.  I love him in everything he's in, and I'm so happy he finally won an Oscar.  He is what made me want to watch this movie.  I knew nothing about Moon apart from that Sam Rockwell was the lead, and boy does he deliver.  He is excellent all the way through, playing multiple characters, and he shines as all of them.  The scenes where Sam 1 and 2 learn about the death of Tess (Dominique McElligot) are the best scenes of the movie, and Sam 1's heartbreaking delivery of the line, "I wanna go home" almost brought me to tears.  It's a powerful performance, and it's one that isn't talked about nearly enough.

I also loved the look of the Lunar Base.  The shots of the station and of the moon itself did a great job of making you feel Sam's isolation and loneliness.  It made me want to go home just watching it.

I also loved the design of GERTY.  The monitor that shows various smiley faces depending on GERTY's mood was a stroke of genius.  I thought GERTY was going to be a HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how much GERTY cared about the Sam's.  It was very touching.

Finally, the scene where we discover there are 2 Sam's is brilliant.  I wasn't expecting it at all and it totally blew me away.  It was a shocking direction for this movie to go in, and I loved it.


What Sucks:

I'm usually not big on sci-fi movies.  Often, I find them to be too slow for my taste.  The first act of Moon definitely has this problem.  The first 20-ish minutes are dreadfully dull and I wasn't interested at all.  I was starting to regret choosing to watch this movie, but then the movie gets great when we discover there are 2 Sam's.  From that point on, the movie is very engaging.


Verdict:

Moon has a very slow and boring first act, but after that it gets great.  Sam Rockwell gives an incredible performance, and the look of the movie does a great job of putting you in his head-space, making you feel lonely and isolated.  Moon is an effective and powerful movie, and most definitely has got it going on.

 8/10: Really Good  



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