Member review

The British Science-Fiction film Moon was made in 2009. The film was directed by Duncan Jones and co-written by Duncan Jones and Nathan Parker. It was produced by Stuart Fenegan and Trudie Styler. The film starred Sam Rockwell as the main character Sam Bell who is an astronaut contracted by Lunar Industries to work in a space station on the moon mining Helium-3 from moon rocks. Helium-3 is meant to be used as an alternative fuel. The film is set in the year 2035 and also features the voice over of Kevin Spacey as ‘GERTY’, the robot which has artificial intelligence. GERTY acts as a companion and provides emotional support. The plot is predictable and somewhat confusing, although there are some interesting points during the film. Basically, the real life Sam Bell is at home with his teenage daughter. We do not know whether he was ever an astronaut. The original Sam Bell has been cloned numerous times so as to prevent Lunar Industries employing astronauts. As a result, they have a never ending workforce that do not require wages. A new clone is used every three years, when one dies it is replaced by another and so on. The whole scenario is quite weird and strange. Sam Bell appears to have a very structured existence, following the same monotonous routine e.g. mining helium-3, eating, sleeping and hallucinating. The music was by Clint Mansell and the film was edited by Nicolas Gaster. The Cinematography was by Gary Shaw and the film was first released in the UK on the 17th July 2009. It was shown previously in American cinemas on the 12th June 2009. The running time is 97 minutes and budget was $5 million. Box Office sales grossed $8 million. Moon was well received by critics and Sam Rockwell’s performance was well praised. It was entirely filmed in Shepperton Studios and took 13 days to film. Personally, I didn’t enjoy the film. The plot confused me, the storyline was ‘run of the mill’ and tedious. GERTY, the A.I., was extremely irritating and repetitive e.g. ‘Sam, are you okay?’. Moon could be viewed by all age groups although I wouldn’t pay to watch it. I found it drab and dull. Certainly not my cup of tea!