Moon looks like one of the coolest films of the year. Written and directed by David Bowie’s son Zowie (now known as Duncan Jones), starring the effortlessly interesting Sam Rockwell and featuring 2001-crossed-with-Alien production design and a trippy plot that seems to require all your attention, Moon was one of the hits of the Festival and is now back for a full cinema release.
Rockwell plays “Sam”, a solo miner supervising operations on the surface of the Moon. The company he works for is digging up a special mineral used to fuel the Earth’s fusion power stations. He’s at the end of a three year gig and starting to go a bit stir crazy. His only company is a Kevin Spacey-voiced service robot named GERTY – a cross between HAL 9000 and the cute drones from Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running. GERTY makes him tea, patches his wounds and pretty much does everything else around the place except go outside and actually fix machines.