Moon
July 30, 2009 | 1 Comment
This summer we’ve seen a variety of movies with science fiction trappings, but none of them are very good science fiction. Now comes a movie that’s a throwback to hard science fiction, to book science fiction.
Moon stars Sam Rockwell, and is directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. It’s set in a not-too-distant future where a corporation is mining the Moon for Helium-3 to provide energy back on Earth.

Moon
Sam is a lone astronaut sent to the Moon to oversee one of the automated bases. He has a three-year stint, his only companion the robot GERTY (Voiced by Kevin Spacey), who seems to be a cousin of HAL-9000.
He’s now a short-timer; a couple more weeks and he’ll be sent home. But he starts to observe strange things on the Moon, and he may not be alone up there. Or maybe he’s just going nuts.
This is a neat little movie in its own right, but it’s also a homage to late 1960s/1970s/early 1980s films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Dark Star, Alien, and Outland. And, I suspect, the Moonscapes and miniatures of Space: 1999.
And the Moonscapes and miniatures in this are spectacular, and seem for the most part to be done Old School, with models instead of CGI.
This is a science fiction movie where the story drives the special effects, not the other way around. This is a thoughful film that depicts the Moon as a desolate, hostile, beautiful place. There’s no holes in the space-time continuum, no giant explosions, and the robots don’t transform into sports cars and 18-wheel trucks. It goes where no science fiction film has gone in a long time – up a flight of stairs for your brain to climb.
Popularity: 59% [?]
(500) Days of Summer
July 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
This movie will probably be described as an anti-romantic comedy, but that isn’t really accurate. It’s a romantic comedy about a romance that doesn’t work out.
Lest I be accused of spoilers, this is revealed in the first thirty seconds of the film.

(500) Days of Summer
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt – 3rd Rock From the Sun, the exceptional movies Brick and The Lookout, and strangely enough, Cobra in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie) is a failed architect who works writing copy at a greeting card company. Enter Summer (Zooey Deschanel – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and numerous Indie-films), the cute, ethereal, somewhat spooky new girl at the office. Tom is smitten.
What follows is 500 days of ups and downs in their relationship. We see it out of sequence; it jumps back and forth between the 500 days.
Everyone probably goes through this type of relationship early on; puppy dog love that’s blind to the fact that the object of its affections is actually a slightly different species all together.
One example, after their first sexual encounter, Tom walks through the park and imagines random passersby breaking into a coordinated musical number to celebrate his scoring.
This is a clever, funny movie that has some hard truths about relationships that you don’t always see in a romantic comedy.
And the worst part is, she’s completely honest with him: She doesn’t want a long term relationship, and she’s not seeing somebody else. That said, she is also playing games with him, with a studied obtuseness.
Sometimes the comedy is a little uneven; for a movie that seems to be trying to strike a realistic tone in much of it, it strikes a false note when Tom, in his cups at the nadir of their relationship, is reduced to writing greeting cards like “Rose are red, violets are blue,” (inside card) “Screw you, bitch!” Yeah, it’s kind of funny, but if he’s actually turning these in to his boss, it hints that he’s bipolar or something, not suggested otherwise in the film.
But there’s a lot of good stuff here. It’s a bittersweet comedy, and that’s not a throwaway reference; it’s bitter, and it’s sweet.
I do find myself wondering, if the movie hadn’t tipped us off at the beginning that the romance wasn’t going to work out, how audiences would take it. Disappointed that they didn’t get a typical Hollywood romantic comedy?
Popularity: 60% [?]


