moon (2009)

Speaking of Elton John, I would probably take his “Rocket Man” over David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as my pick for the essential space-travel anthem anytime, never mind that I am a huge Bowie fan. Moon, the directorial debut of Bowie’s firstborn child Duncan Jones, would be my pick for the Halloween DVD this year: not that it is a scary movie, far from it, and the robot voice done by Kevin Spacey is more dull than creepy; and not that the film is particularly good too, and I actually fell asleep halfway through this in the cinema, which is rare for me. This trippy, minimalist but ultimately disappointing sci-fi movie is written specifically for Sam Rockwell, who plays a homesick astronaut, named Sam Bell, contracted by a Korean space company to be stationed on a lunar base for about three years. As Sam confronts the presence of a clone of his self who somehow strayed onto the moon, the film digresses into an identity-crisis puzzle that is perhaps more confusing than convincing. Rockwell, who was particularly good in 2002’s Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, is always watchable of course, and I did like the fact that this film rather successfully work sparse gadgets into the narrative.