Moon

The year is 2024, and Lunar Industries has found a way to harvest energy from the Moon’s surface to be used back on earth. Sam (Rockwell) is coming to the end of a three-year stint working as a lone Moon-based employee, with only the computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company. He longs to be back on earth with his wife and daughter, who he can contact only through video recordings. His solitude is disrupted, however, on a routine journey across the Moon’s surface when he comes across a crashed vehicle with somebody inside it — someone who looks bizarrely familiar...

It has long been felt that intelligent sci-fi films are a thing of the past. Moon soundly contradicts such a theory, while acknowledging the debt it owes to the older classics of the genre, drawing on films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien. Crucially, like all truly good sci-fi films, this story isn’t simply about science and outer space. There are lingering questions about how Sam’s solitude is affecting his mental state, brought out through Rockwell’s nuanced, unsentimental performance. The film also tackles universal themes of loneliness and alienation, forcing the audience to ask what it is to be human.

As David Bowie’s son (cue the jokes about this being his very own 'Space Oddity'), director Duncan Jones could easily be one of those talentless movie business types who has relied on nepotism and sycophancy to get ahead in the industry. However, in this film he proves himself as a director worth watching, as he constructs this story with tenderness and originality. The miniscule budget that the film was made on doesn’t in any way restrict the creative visual effects and the retro beauty of the spacecraft, making this film a rare treat, even for those with little interest in sci-fi.

Shoshana Eilon