TV's James Moran is evangelising that you - YOU! - should go and see Moon. But the Dr and I were going anyway, and have just returned. Screen 3 at the Ritzy in Brixton was full, if not very big in the first place (and the dimming lights weren't working so we watched trailers in the gaudy glare of the "cleaning lights").
Anyhow, what a splendid film. It's difficult to speak of without spoiling it's many delights - you really should go see it. The plot is old-skool sci-fi clever but with an emotional wossname that got the Dr hooked. She feared tedious physics for too long (what she wearily refers to as "moon porn"), but I caught her snuffling at the end. Hah. Tomorrow, she's being made to watch The Wrath of Khan on Blue-Ray as part of my ongoing Professor Higginsing.
I loved the tactile weight of the old-skool model shots and the sly setting-up of the revelations. I loved the warm logic of the small role played by Kevin Spacey, and the familiarity / claustrophobia of the small set. It had jokes and intelligence and awe in the face of the vast, dead grey rock. And, my cleverer colleagues inform me, the physics is pretty good, too if you can forgive the central conceit.
All that, and this review doesn't mention the director's kook parents. Think that must be a first.
Saw it with Binding. We loved/bemused it in equal measure. Inspired by your Twilight Zone review, I did tell him "It would have made an ace episode of The Twilight Zone."
ReplyDeleteHe agreed. There's a whole lot right with it over the Giant-Robots-Smashy-Smashy Nonsense of the rest of summer, but it's also the kind of story that could have been told in an hour if there was still a way that kind of thing was made.
But there isn't, and so a proper film it had to be - but I thought it was vastly more enjoyable than Solaris, and managed to be subtle and enthralling. Even if reading any single review pretty much blows the whole thing.
And if I have to read one! more! thing! that says "He's changed his name to avoid building his career off of the back of being the son of..." I will weep.
Yes, it would be a good Twilight Zone, but cinema gives the Moon itself scale and gosh-wow, increasing the sense of isolation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's seems to be consciously riffing on 2001 - in the look and feel and Spacey, plus there's a short at the end which seems pinched from the trippy, Sid Sutton-style sequence. It's a ponderous, Big Concept sci-fi movie of the old skool, only without the ponderous bit.
D'you mean Clooney Solaris or Russian Solaris?