Moon, stars Sam Rockwell, who plays a single person left to man a helium mining operation on the moon. Kevin Spacey plays Gerty, the movies every present base station computer. Sam has been on the moon base three years and is starting to go crazy. Gerty, a modern HAL 9000, could have been a very interesting role, a post 2001: A Space Odyssey, post 1968, artificially intelligent computer. Sadly, a very talented Kevin Spacey doesn't get to go anywhere with Gerty. The character could have easily been omitted, as though in the forty years since the cinematic introduction of the artificially intelligent machine, there really wasn't anything new to add, outside of an LCD screen that displays only emoticons (sad and happy faces) which was just silly. As though four decades of technological innovation have lead to little more than an AOL instant messaging program with arms.
The film does have some twist and creates an environment for solid character development. Sam Rockwell does a very good job as the lone keeper of the station. When i first saw the trailer for this film, i had a pretty good idea of what it was... basically a shameless rip off of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was pretty close to my first impression, but more of a collection of early sci-fi movie cliches, like material from Soylent Green, Logan's Run and The Body Snatchers, bundled into a modern movie. I give this movie a thumbs up because of Sam Rockwell's performance, but you could skip this one and just rent some of the movies I've mentioned, as they become available on BlueRay. Surprisingly this was rated 8.3 on IMDB. Perhaps much of the material in this film is new to many of the folks rating films today.
Hi Steve.
