"Moon"

By David Hudson on 06/11/2009

[Updated through 6/12]

"'Moon' emerged in January as one of Sundance's more provocative curios," begins ST VanAirsdale at Movieline: a one-man show tens of thousands of miles from Earth, an existential thriller about a single astronaut both for and against himself. Critics fussed over its influences, then complained about the impossibility of writing about a film whose Big Twist arrives in its first 25 minutes. Sony Classics nabbed it for distribution despite no real track record with sci-fi, but with designs on selling the feature directorial debut of David Bowie's son Duncan Jones. All of which are fine, but overlook the most essential of the many true things about 'Moon': It's excellent."

"'Moon' curries a lot of favor in its first 15 minutes, which consist of star Sam Rockwell [as Sam Bell] going about his daily business as the lone human employee at a power company's lunar outpost," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Rockwell cracks jokes, swears freely, and demonstrates a love-hate relationship with his over-helpful, omnipresent computer/robot GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey.... Unlike GERTY - who expresses rudimentary emotions via a series of never-not-funny smiley/frowny/nervous faces - 'Moon' has an honest-to-goodness personality."

"Jones's debut, which had its local premiere at the last Tribeca Film Festival, is pleased to engage genre behemoths - '2001,' 'Solaris,' 'Blade Runner' - as well as B-movie classics like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'" J Hoberman in the Voice: "Impressively pulled together on a modest budget, 'Moon' has a strong lead and a valid philosophical premise but, despite Bell's fissured psyche, the drama is inert. Ground control to Major Tom: 'Moon' orbits an idea, but it doesn't go anywhere."

"[Y]ou've rarely seen so many influences assimilated as smoothly or affectionately as they are here, and for a good portion of its running time, 'Moon' casts a spell in spite of its self-consciousness," writes Ben Kenigsberg in Time Out New York. "Unfortunately, the ideas don't quite measure up to the storytelling craft."

Henry Stewart in the L Magazine: "'Trust no one' is the cynical subtext, not even yourself - at least until you figure out who you really are."

"Mainstream Hollywood doesn't quite know what to make of Rockwell," notes Alonso Duralde at MSNBC, "but this is the kind of challenging role in which he thrives. Creating a layered portrait with a relatively scarce amount of dialogue... Rockwell finds the soul of this isolated, hard-working grunt."

Dave Itzkoff profiles Jones for the New York Times; Gaynor Flynn, for the Independent. More interviews: Frank DiGiacomo (Vanity Fair), Steve Erickson (Film & Video), Mark Healy (GQ), Ryan Stewart (Suicide Girls) and Scott Weintraub (Tribeca Film).

And David Poland's is a video interview.

For Salon, Caitlin Shamberg talks with Jones and Rockwell.

Bilge Ebiri talks with Rockwell for Vulture.

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 6/12: "To say too much might ruin some of the surprises in this film's spare, carefully inflected plot, which in its structure, its themes and its parsimonious exposition may remind you of a Ray Bradbury short story," writes AO Scott in the NYT. "The film's ideas are interesting, but don't feel entirely worked out, and Mr Rockwell's intriguingly strange performance (or performances) is left suspended, without the context that would give Sam's plight its full emotional and philosophical impact. The smallness of this movie is decidedly a virtue, but also, in the end, something of a limitation."

"There may simply have been too little in [Nathan] Parker's script to play with beyond a couple of plot twists," suggests Chris Barsanti in Film Journal International. "But Jones' ability to craft a thoughtful and emotive piece of science fiction out of little more than a clever concept, a single set, and some not-too-convincing special effects is nothing to be ignored. This may not be Tarkovsky, but it's about as close as one can realistically hope for."

"[T]he film struggles to find entertainment within the esoteric," writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. "While they're trying to figure it out, we're left stranded on the dark side of the moon, a cold and solitary place with not even Gerty there to keep us warm."

Nick Schager talks with Jones for IFC.

"We could use more speculations like 'Moon' - as the expiration dates on our genre landmarks pass by without fulfilling their fictive promises ('2001's' come and gone; 'Blade Runner's' 2014 is fast approaching and replicants, save perhaps the cast of 'The Hills,' are barely a glimmer on the horizon), our collective imagination needs a bit of a refresh." Jeff Reichert in Reverse Shot: "It also doesn't hurt to have an early summer reminder that science fiction needn't just be action filmmaking peppered with spaceships and stun guns and time warps. Sci-fi's supposed to run on ideas, and thankfully 'Moon' has more than a few."

That terrific poster you see up there? Adrian Curry has a bit of background on it in The Auteurs' Notebook. It "was designed by, or adapted from a design by, Britain's All City Media, whose alternative designs are all equally strong," and he's got those, too.

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists "10 Unhappy Astronauts in Movies."

[Photo: "Moon," Sony Pictures, 2009]

Tags: Duncan Jones, Moon, Sam Rockwell