My Amazon Movie Reviews: Moon

I'll See Yourself on The Dark Side Of The Moon 
4 Out of 5 Stars 

Sam Bush (Sam Rockwell) is in the last two weeks of a three year contract, mining fuel that can only be found on the dark side of the Moon. He talks to his plants and has his cubicle bed surrounded by pictures of his wife and daughter. The three years of isolation is taking its toll. He's seeing things, and losing his concentration. When he gets into a lunar rover to investigate a problem with one of the land strip-mining machines, he accidentally crashes, only to wake up in the infirmary with GERTY 3000 (voiced with HAL 9300 coolness by Kevin Spacey).

But something is wrong. Sam thinks there's someone else with him. And there is...another Sam. Has Sam lost his mind in the isolation and aftermath of the crash? Did he die and just hallucinate what is happening? Is there a conspiracy of clones? Is he really being rescued, as the messages from Earth suggest? Thus is the premise of Duncan Jones' (aka Zowie Bowie) "Moon." Rockwell plays himself and himself, trying to reconcile all that is happening to the twin hims in hopes of achieving wellness before he can go home. It's Science Fiction with very little science, only a lonely miner and his robot friend trying to figure out what is going on in their isolated outpost.

To that end, there are obvious parallels with modern classics like Silent Running (isolated man battles himself after greedy corporation screws everything up) and 2001 - A Space Odyssey.Rockwell plays the everyman of Sam Bush very effectively as he unravels the mystery of his predicament. It's also nice to watch a science movie where plot-lines are not connected by an endless series of explosions or CGI aliens (in fact, the special effects are largely retro in nature, something I found refreshing). Jones provides us with an ambitious debut as a director, as well...and given that the only two pop songs he inserted into the movie were ever popular "Walking On Sunshine" and one hit wonder Chesney Hawkes' "The One and Only," says a lot about him not taking easy choices.

After all, how simple would it have been to call up Dad and ask for "Space Oddity?"