Moon, Starring Sam Rockwell and directed my relative newcomer Duncan Jones is probably one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen. The movie takes plays on, as you may have already guessed, the moon. The earth on the brink of collapse due to the energy crisis looks to the heavens to find alternative energy, and they do so on the moon. A corporation sets up a mining center and send Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) on a lonely three year contract to help with the operations. The movie picks up near the end of the three year stint, having only 2 weeks to go before he can go back home to see his family (his wife was pregnant when he left) and to have actual human contact. The operations on the facility are almost completely automated, only requiring one person (Sam) to oversee that everything runs smoothly. His only friend on base is GERTY, a computer which is there to aid Sam with pretty much everything, including cutting his hair. Having only two weeks left since start to become a little off. Sam starts seeing things, a woman sitting in his chair, the silhouette of a woman outside on the moon. After these encounters the movie takes a complete u-turn, and the rest of the movie builds up to explaining what's going on.

The pace of the movie is extremely slow, reminding me of the greatest space movie ever, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's a great way of conveying the loneliness that Sam is going through. The whole movie takes place on the moon, so naturally there really isn't any color in the movie except the smiley face on GERTY's screen, but it actually feels homely and worn in making you feel like you've been living there for three years with Sam. The music score is a simple melody played on the piano, but it sticks with you throughout the movie and long after it's over.

The best part of the movie is that it's so full of humanity, yet there's really only one person in the movie. Sam Rockwell portrays the entire gamut of human emotions in one hour and thirty minutes, and to me it's absolutely ridiculous that he wasn't nominated for any type of award, be it a Golden Globe or an Academy Award.

Moon does show some weakness at times, like having normal gravity and movement inside the living quarters yet outside everything moves slow like in lower gravity, and that somewhere towards the middle of the movie it does feel like it stretches out a little, but those are minor hiccups in an otherwise fantastic movie. I highly recommend it.