Moon

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: A
DVD Features Grade: B-
Overall Grade: A-

A great psychological thriller is hard to come by. If there is one film genre that has a shortage in the quality section, it is definitely psychological thrillers. They have to be so well executed in so many ways that it is nearly impossible to create a perfect piece in that field. When it happens it is always miraculous feet: movies like Cape Fear, Misery, and Silence of the Lambs all come to mind as exceptional psychological thrillers that have gained massive critical reception as well as mainstream recognition for their bone-chilling and ingenious storytelling.

It is a shame for Moon that it didn’t manage to gain wide release in theaters because if it had done so it would almost undoubtedly fall into the category of excellence that those other films listed have. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the only man occupying a station on the moon where he extracts helium-3 for use as a clean energy source on Earth. Having no direct contact with anyone, aside from delayed messages which take a great deal of time to travel from Earth to the station; and an assistant robot named GERTY (Kevin Spacey), Sam becomes more and more anxious to head home in two weeks. It gets harder to handle when things don’t go quite as planned and Sam finds himself to be in the company of someone else, himself.

The movie is definitely eerie at times, but more than anything it is very sad. Once Sam finds the other Sam the film becomes somewhat of a test of Sam’s self worth. If there is more than one of him, how significant is he? Also, why is there a copy of himself on the ship? The thing that makes the issue of value more effective than that of sanity is that we get a clean cut answer to the sanity question, the answer to the value question is never entirely resolved.

There are an ample number of features on the DVD, but in all honesty many of them are less informative or interesting, and more pointless or boring. There is a short film by director Duncan Jones which absolutely falls under the boring category. Short films by directors aren’t always a letdown, but this one definitely was after watching his full length feature. As far as pointless goes, Filmmaker’s Q&A takes that prize: it is everything you would think it would be and less.

As far as good features go, The Making of…, Creating the Visual Effects, and Science Center Q&A all make up for those previous features by all falling under the informative and interesting categories. The prize feature has to be the creating of the visual effects, which comes as a surprise because it is just footage dubbed over with explanations of how it was executed. The feature goes over the double screening of the two Sims, the creation of the robot GERTY, and the Moon Landscape. ...