When Falls the Coliseum

Moon review

Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Glenn Giangrande

If you’re a fan of “what the heck is going on in Space” movies, then Moon is right up your alley.

While I hesitate to call it a science fiction film because there isn’t too much science going on, it does fall under that category. The premise of the movie is one that has been trotted out there before — a person spends too long in one place and starts to hallucinate. The place, in this case, is the Moon, where Sam Rockwell’s character of Sam Bell is closing out a multi-year stint mining for helium-3, a substance vital to Earth’s energy supply. His lone companion is Gerty, a supercomputer powered vocally by Kevin Spacey…or is it? Bell begins to see visions of a woman, and then he happens upon a man who may or may not be real.

It’s all about Rockwell in this movie and he does a fantastic job. Not every actor is successfully able to pull off a performance in which he doesn’t have much to work off on-screen, but he does it well, reminding me a little bit of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. The scenery against him looks believable, and the appearance of his surroundings is reminiscent of what you might see in other sci-fi flicks.

Moon has received a number of favorable reviews, and they’re all justified. I recommend it.