Moon

We have an old theatre in town - the Roxy. The main theatre is painted up like a street in a small European town, with the roof painted up to be a sky that has blinking stars in it that twinkle softy. I love seeing movies there.
Last night, I had the privilege of seeing Moon there.

I will admit I knew nothing about the film before going, but J has been wanting to see it for a while. He figured it would never make it here (we miss a lot of the less widely released films) but we were lucky enough to be in the mood to go out to see a film when we found this was at the Roxy.

It's a great film -one of the best I have seen in a long while. It centres around the one living character in it, Sam Bell. Sam has a three year contract to work for Lunar Industries. For the contracts entire duration, he is the sole employee based at their lunar station where his primary job responsibility is to harvest and periodically rocket back to Earth supplies of helium-3, the current clean fuel used on Earth. There is no direct communication link available between the lunar station and Earth, so his only direct real-time interaction is with GERTY, the intelligent computer whose function is to attend to his day to day needs. With such little human contact and all of it indirect, he feels three years is far too long to be so isolated. He is beginning to hallucinate as the end of his three years approaches. All he wants is to return to Earth to be with his wife and their daughter, who was born just prior to his leaving for this job. With two weeks to go, he gets into an accident at one of the mechanical harvesters and is rendered unconscious. Injured, he awakens back at the station in the infirmary, and GERTY tells him that a rescue team will come to the station to clean up. After his recuperation, he makes an unexpected discovery. Because of his find, he begins to doubt everything, and slowly deals with the situation on his own terms...

This film is understated and brilliantly acted. Sam Rockwell (who up to this point I only recall as Zaphod Beeblebrox) plays his role very well. Kevin Spacey's voice as GERTY is also good fit. The dialog is wonderful - the computer GERTY really has a role in the story and it lures you in minute by minute as you discover what Sam does and how he plans to deal with the situation he is in. Subtle story with great depth.

I recommend you see it if you can - I really enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the pie I had later. I'll be sad when the pie is finally gone...:)