The filmmakers say they wanted to make a sci-fi story within their limited budget, so used ingredients that would satisfy both. Sadly, the screenplay is a bit low on other things as well, like meaningful content.
Moon (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:158
Fresh:141
Rotten:17
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Boosted by Sam Rockwell's intense performance, Moon is a compelling work of science-fiction, and a promising debut from director Duncan Jones.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for language.
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Jun 12, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $4,785,434
Synopsis:
It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a...
It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive.
Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.
Suddenly, Sam’s health starts to deteriorate. Painful headaches, hallucinations and a lack of focus lead to an almost fatal accident on a routine drive on the moon in a lunar rover. While recuperating back at the base (with no memory of how he got there), Sam meets a younger, angrier version of himself, who claims to be there to fulfill the same three year contract Sam started all those years ago.
Confined with what appears to be a clone of his earlier self, and with a “support crew” on its way to help put the base back into productive order, Sam is fighting the clock to discover what’s going on and where he fits into company plans. --© Sony Pictures Classics
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Director: Duncan Jones
Director: Duncan Jones
Screenwriter: Mark Bowden, Nathaniel Parker
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Reviews for Moon
As the two Sams struggle to find their humanity, the film struggles to find entertainment within the esoteric. While they're trying to figure it out, we're left stranded on the dark side of the moon.
By film's end, it feels like you've been talking to the same robot as always.
Storywise, Moon fails to live up to the promise of its premise. There's plenty of atmosphere, but little gravity.
An intellectual sci-fi tale that unabashedly takes its inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, it resembles the Kubrick masterpiece less than an episode of The Outer Limits.
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.
By halfway the film starts to feel like a mere exercise, one more effort to get maximum value from limited resources. Too much machinery, not enough dread.
Jones is a methodical filmmaker, and he conveys his plot without mucking it up too terribly, but he's also dull.
...either an over-extended or under developed treatment of a good idea. There's not enough there there to make "Moon" an exceptional genre piece.
An interesting idea goes astray in this unusual sci-fi thriller in which Sam Rockwell's astronaut Sam becomes captive in the recesses of his own mind.
As a piece of entertainment, Moon is a failed experiment. Yet though it never becomes enjoyable or gets even within hailing distance of fun, it has some interesting ideas.
Psychedelic sci-fi? Glam rock goes off-world? No: wordy and overwrought like a radio play in space.
It feels like a "moon" trip we've taken before in better films but Sam Rockwell is brilliant in a tour-de-force performance.
For a 'paranoid thriller' to work, the paranoia has to rise and rise until a climax at the finale, not give away the game halfway in.
Not even the marvellous Sam Rockwell (all two or more of him) can quite make up for the lack of dramatic impetus. You watch it and you keep thinking: Oh no, I can't cope with all this acting!
A minor masterpiece. Quite simply Moon, given its minuscule budget - around £2.5million - is a cinematic miracle. The film is one of the best examples of thought provoking sci-fi that we have seen in an age.
An impressive directorial debut with a smart, absorbing and well-acted film that’s not just for geeks.
Latest News for Moon
December 07, 2009:
Awards Tour: Fish Tank, Moon Win British Independent Film Awards ![]()
Duncan Jones took home the Best Debut Director award and his film was named Best British Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards in London last night. Fish Tank... More...
December 04, 2009:
Sundance 2010: RT's 10 Most Anticipated Movies
Five or six years ago, the Sundance Film Festival was more famous for showing dozens of worthy, politically correct movies that instantly disappeared than the odd breakout hits... More...
November 27, 2009:
Duncan Jones Reteams With Kevin Spacey
'Moon' director Duncan Jones and the movie's computer voice, Kevin Spacey, have reteamed for a couple of advertisements currently airing on British TV. The commercials, embedded... More...
October 08, 2009:
Duncan Jones talks Moon, Sam Rockwell, and Mute
Space. Once film's final frontier, over the years sci-fi has sometimes been the domain of cliche and inferior riffs on past glories. All the more surprising, then, to discover a... More...
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 68% 68% | The Last Station | 12/23 |
| 80% 80% | Sherlock Holmes | 12/25 |
| 38% 38% | It's Complicated | 12/25 |
| 36% 36% | Nine | 12/25 |
| | Alvin and the Chipmunk… | 12/25 |
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