Review: Moon (DVD)

It has been a long time since I've actually reviewed a movie on here, and for good reason - it's been a long time since I've actually sat down and watched a movie. Trying to get through all the Oscar movies is a bit of movie overload, so right after it every year I seem to need a post-Oscar movie break, so I just slow down a little on my movie watching, but the Netflix keep coming in and I have a couple of good movies saved on my DVR AND I'm plugging away at watching "Pushing Daisies" at night, and once that's done with, I'll get back to watching more movies.

And this brings me to the movie I watched this afternoon, "Moon." I hadn't heard of "Moon" until I watched the BAFTAs which are Britain's equivalent of the Oscars, and it won the award for Best Debut by a Brit for Director Duncan Jones (who PS is David Bowie's son!) I didn't quite know what to expect but I thought this movie was great.

It was kind of in the same vein as "Alien", with a dash of "District 9", a good portion of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the tiniest part "The Parent Trap" minus the humor and musical number.  The plot concerns Sam Bell, played by a fantastic Sam Rockwell, who faced quite a challenge with this part and was phenomenal. Anyways, Sam Bell works for Lunar, a company who mines Helium from the Moon and sends it back to Earth, providing 70% of the Earth's power. He is up there all by himself and towards the end of his three year contract with the company. He can't wait to get back to Earth to see his wife and new little girl, until when he's out harvesting and gets in a crash. Suddenly he wakes back up in the infirmary under the care of the station's talking and emoting robot, GERTY, voiced by none other than Kevin Spacey, who nurses Sam back to some sort of health. When Sam heads out to the Harvester he crashed into, he discovers the dying body of none other than himself. I'm not going to give the rest away, but the mystery was enough to intrigue me, and even though I could see what was coming for the most part, I loved the whole "is he going crazy? is this really happening? what is going on?" vibe of the story. In the end, not everything is revealed - you're left to either pick up on the subtle clues or to draw your own conclusions, but the movie doesn't make you think super hard, which I appreciate, especially on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I really like this psychology approach to science fiction. When most sci-fi recently has been fighting aliens on foreign planets or transforming robots that have wars with each other, there have been refreshing science fiction like "Moon" or "District 9" that go into the psychology of the characters or who offer up messages - it's smart science fiction.

Sam Rockwell was brilliant in this movie. I have maybe only seen him in one or two other movies, and he's always a good actor, but this movie is HIS movie. Literally, the cast only has 10 people in it, and 8 of them are only shown on video monitors for a few minutes combined, and the other 1 is just the voice of a robot. Without giving too much away, Rockwell acts against himself for the majority of the movie (thus "The Parent Trap" similarities) but never once do you think he's not acting with nobody there.

I probably would've never seen this movie if it didn't pique my interest on the BAFTAs but I'm glad I watched it, and now I'm highly recommending it to you too.


Patrick Approval Rating: 9/10


"Moon" @ imdb

Revisiting: Star Trek (DVD)

To preface this revisiting review I must explain how I end up watching many of my movies. You see, it takes me about forty-five minutes to an hour to fall asleep at night. And in the meantime, while I lay in my bed waiting to relax and pass out, I usually put on a movie. I have some criteria for what types of movies these should be. It should be one I've seen before so as I'm not so enthralled I need to know what happens next and end up watching the whole thing. It can't be scary or an intense thriller because I actually need to fall asleep and relax and not get all wired up and scared. And it should be a movie that's easy to watch, as in I can fall asleep to it one night and then pick right up the night after with no problem, then rinse and repeat that process. These movies tend to take a good three or fours nights to get through. But I wouldn't have it any other way. It's sort of a ritual.

So "Star Trek." It took me four nights with a weekend trip to Disney World stuck in the middle to get through this, so my review may be disjointed and not so much a review at all, but I've seen it before and enjoyed it very much the first time. The same goes for the second time around too!

Never did I thought I would like "Star Trek." I am and will forever be a "Star Wars" geek at heart and I didn't think one could love and appreciate both- that it was one or the other. But JJ Abrams, who I've been a fan of his work since "Alias," made "Star Trek" accessible to everybody. He brought it beyond the Trekkies, so that everybody could enjoy it. I thought the story was original enough to please old fans and different enough so that new fans wouldn't be lost or need any prior "Star Trek" knowledge. I also commend whoever decided to worked this prequel in with a time travelling bit, so that now anything goes in this parallel to the original "Star Trek" universe. It's a great idea and a great setup for future "Star Trek" projects. And, by George I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am looking forward to future "Star Trek" installments.

Patrick Approval Rating: 9/10

Star Trek @ imdb