Moon (2009)

The surface of the moon is lifeless and cold. On the parts that are facing away from the sun, the "nighttime" can get down to 243 degrees below zero. That's cold....even for a guy that lives in Rexburg.

"Moon" is about a man named Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) that works on the moon, for a duration of 3 years, monitoring harvester machines that process lunar rock and extract Helium-3, the newly chosen energy source of planet earth. Sam works alone. He is the only human on the station, however he is kept company by a robot named Gerty, who basically runs all components on the space station. He is highly intelligent, and is a nice, soothing voice (Kevin Spacey) to Sam.

Sam is a family man, and has left his wife and small daughter on Earth during his stint in space. He can communicate with them, but only through taped messages that headquarters sends him weekly. The live feed to Earth has allegedly been faulty the entirety of his employ, so these messages are his only communication beyond his lunar home.

When we meet Sam, he has about 2 weeks left before he can return home. He is antsy, impatient, and starts to see things that aren't really there. This is where I'll stop........

The movie is great sci-fi. I loved it. Its slow, but don't get impatient. Every scene has its purpose, and Sam Rockwell is brilliant (see Matchstick Men). The moon shots are really cool, and the interior of space station has an eerie, morgue-ish, feel to it as well. This is not a (BOO!) scary movie, but it is frightening in mostly a psychological way. There are two great twists that I enjoyed, and there might be a third if you keep an eye out for it.

The movie is rated R for a few F-bombs, but otherwise its good stuff. It might be hard to find at your local movie store, but Netflix has it on Instant viewing.

Just a quick note.....the film was directed by David Bowie's son, who had been doing commercials up until this point. Kind of gives new meaning to Bowie's 1969 hit song, Space Oddity. I look for him to do some other great stuff in the future. 3.5 stars for me.

Clooney is polished

A few nights ago, I wrote a killer film review about George Clooney's "Up in the Air". Unfortunately, the genius that is blogspot, erased it, never to be found again. Needless to say, its taking me until now to get over it, and give a VERY abbreviated version of what I wrote:

Clooney sucked the last ten years....can we just get that out of the way right now? He did "O Brother, where art thou?" in 2000, and then became Danny Ocean for a decade. Weak.

However, in "Up in the Air", he is a true leading actor.....he actually leads! I say that because he made everyone around him better. Both of his female counterparts received Oscar nominations for their roles, as well as Clooney.

As with most of my reviews, I try to stay away from talking about the plot too much....if you are interested in the film, you can do that on your own....but what I will say, is there are so many things that could have gone wrong in this movie, but it just stayed the course and clicked along. I can get along with movies like that, and I did famously with this one. This is Clooney's best movie, and we get to watch Anna Kendrick in her breakout performance. She is going to be a lead some day, and a dang good one at that. 4 stars for me easily.

Oh, one more thing I mentioned in the original review that I almost forgot here.....Jason Reitman directed this movie as well as "Juno" and "Thank you for Smoking". I recommend both of these films highly.....this young director has a long presence ahead. Go make yourself acquainted with him now....you won't be disappointed.