MOON shines light, sometimes bright and probing, sometimes spectral and unnerving on the dilemmas—psychological, physical and practical—of its protagonist/s, isolated on a three-year stint overseeing a mining operation on the far side of Earth’s satellite companion.  Moon glows from the tour de force performance of Sam Rockwell, on screen alone (sort of) for 90 of its 97 minutes, with just a few brief video messages from his wife (Kaya Scodelario) and mission control back where you can go outside without a sealed suit and helmet. ‘Sam Bell’ does have company, in the form/s of his robot assistant ‘GERTY’ (voiced by Kevin Spacey, aptly named and cast) but when Sam starts seeing things he begins to question his grip on reality. Who not- on-Earth is this out-of-no thin air space new guy who looks exactly like Sam? Is ‘lunarcy’ setting in?

Duncan Jones (son of David & Angela Bowie) made his feature debut as director, co-writing the script with Nathan Parker, getting more than a good deal of brainfood (sci-fi movie wise), suspense (no ravenous aliens or mega-explosions), cleverness (excellent use of art direction, set design, miniatures and assorted props, no hot, barely-clad princess-warrior babes) and humanity (of a sort) for a relative pittance ($5,000,000), proof there are traces of intelligent life on our pretty but seemingly oblivious orb. *

“I’m here to keep you safe, Sam. I want to help you.”

While GERTY inescapably echoes HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Spacey a master of precise, polite dispassion) and the man-alone situation harkens back to Silent Running (for that matter, Robinson Crusoe), Jones homage to those films and the situational status dilemmas of Alien and Outland (stuck in livable but confined space within boundless and unlivable Space) his script, direction and convincing technical milieu forge their own tense, humorous and sad surreal-reality. If not as exciting as the combat-infused, impossible dreamscape-nightmares of those epics with ships, operations and reach positing a scale we’ll never achieve, the moon-mining (and how it’s staffed) comes off as much more plausible, aiding the relatable nervousness and poignancy of Sam’s isolation, confusion and acceptance. Rockwell’s gamut-running interpretation of a being with flawed design built-in is craftsmanship that’s flaw free.

While critic telescopes locked on and festival gazers looked up, the masses mostly missed, paying out just $6,100,000 in the States, about $4,000,000 more elsewhere. Buzz had/has it that Rockwell was robbed of an Oscar nomination.

 * Moon landed for $5,000,000. That same 2009 the moronic Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen exhausted forty-two times as much, $210,000,000. Like attracting like, that hunk of scrap metal became the year’s 4th biggest hit. Well-mined Moon wasn’t even a crescent at 163rd.

Space Oddity—chipping off the old block (or ‘Jean Genie’), director Jones middle name is Zowie.