“Moon” Excellence

Excellence

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

MOON is an excellent film that doesn’t answer all of the questions it raises, but it leaves them for you to think about and enjoy for weeks to come, if not for years to come.

In other words, it stays with you and isn’t easily forgotten about, as so many other movies are today.

It was directed by Duncan Jones, which is all the more remarkable, because this is the first feature film that he has directed. What is at least interesting, if not also remarkable, is that Jones is the son of David Bowie.

The film stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the only human on a mining base on the far side of the Moon, which means that he doesn’t even have the comfort of being able to look up into the sky and see planet Earth.

Sam has only two weeks left on his three-year contract with Lunar Industries, and he says, “I’m talking to myself on a regular basis. Time to go home.”

However, Sam isn’t alone inside the lunar station. There is also a robot named Gerty to look after him and the operation.

Gerty, which is voiced by Kevin Spacey, isn’t just a stationary box inside a wall, either. It has components that can move around inside the station, and it has an animated smiley face that displays its three “emotions”: happy, sad, and noncommittal.

Sam can also communicate with his wife and daughter back home on Earth by using recorded video messages, but that isn’t very much comfort to him.

One day Sam injures himself when he is distracted by a hallucination of a beautiful woman sitting in a chair, and his injury will have consequences later on.

Worse than that, however, Sam has an accident in one of the lunar rovers while out at a mining operation, and this accident will change his life for the rest of the time he has on his contract, if not forever.

When Sam lies to Gerty, and then we catch Gerty lying to Sam, we know that something dramatic is about to happen. And when Sam’s replacement shows up, it does.

At first Sam and his replacement don’t get along, but then they start cooperating for reasons that we couldn’t have imagined.

MOON leaves us with questions, but its lasting impression is excellence.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”