The Hack - July | 4Q Magazine

The Hack - July

by The Hack on 29.07.09

Moon
Directed by Duncan Jones
Starring Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey.
Out now.

I almost don’t want to review Moon. Plot twists abound, I could so easily spoil the whole experience by talking to anyone who hasn’t already seen it. For the most part, I just want to grab you by the scruff of the neck, throw you into the cinema and let you know where I’ll be when you stumble out, dying to discuss it. I’ll order coffee and ice cream on expenses and I won’t let you go home until you’ve finally expressed coherently what you think actually happened during this mesmerising, enthralling movie.

Here is as much of the plot as I can give you. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, who has been working on the moon on his jack for the last three years. He is mining and delivering a critical compound back to Earth to help solve an energy crisis. For company he has GERTY, a computer whose voice sounds disturbingly like that loon out of Se7en. He’s lonely, he’s pining, he’s been there too long.

Then something happens, which leads to other things happening, conversations being had that risk the mental security of the audience, and finally and Big Thing coming to light that makes you go “Wow” and want to discuss it over ice cream. That’s really all I can give you at this point.

Put it this way : Moon is so excellently presented, marrying beautiful, classic model effects-work with a bright and startling 21st Century aesthetic, and one of the most intelligent scripts to hit screens in decades, it makes such a watchable star out of the ever-reliable Rockwell and asks such brain-angeringly good questions, that it’s barely worth mentioning the Director, Duncan Jones, is David Bowie’s son. For such a pedigree to have absolutely nothing to do with the work, can only mean that the work is incredible. And it is. Moon is a treasure of a film, made by people who grew up on Alien and always thought not enough people watched Darren Aronofsky’s Pi. It demands more of you than you’re used to being asked for by today’s “art”, and yet it is funny, exciting, exhilarating in equal measure. I honestly cannot give you any more. Go in blind, then get on the forums and start a chat about it.

Have ice cream to hand.

Go see Moon, right now.