Moon: Open the Pod Bay Doors, GERTY …

You know, I’ve got to admit, any minute now, me and Allison are going to put the clocks forward, and hit the sack!

But it’s been a fascinating evening …

Do you remember — at last Saturday’s movie night — I told you part of what I thought told me made for a good movie?

It boils down to the amount of half-time chat that goes on, while I’m doing the half time tea.

Interesting stuff to listen in to, I know that … !

Tonight’s film — Moon, directed by Duncan Jones, and starring Sam Rockwell — certainly generated enough half time natter that was interesting to listen too.

And — on top of that — Kevin D, Movie Night Adrian, Kevin Z, Allison and I, had a seriously good time bouncing idea’s, thoughts, and generalised stuff, around afterwards …

Stuff that …

Well …

You would have had to be here to listen!

The plot?

Well, the plot’s relatively easy to summarise, although I don’t know how well I’ll do this …

Moon is set in a near future, where humanity has solved its energy crisis — in part — by mining Helium-3 from the Moon.

And has Sam Bell — the central character, played by Sam Rockwell — coming to the end of a three year stint, supervising the various mining operations.

At least, that’s what he thinks …

Part of the isolation he feels?

Is down to the fact his only company is the base Artificial Intelligence, GERTY.

And that contact with Earth is permanently — apparently — down, due to faults in the various communications satellites that relay messages from Earth to the Moon and back …

Via Jupiter …

What he doesn’t expect — with a fortnight left on his contract — is the the mild hallucinations he’s starting to have or the crash he has in a Moon buggy on an trip to one of the unmanned mining vehicles.

Or waking up in the station’s infirmary, relatively uninjured, with little in the memory of how he got there …

Or any understanding of why GERTY is insistent he doesn’t leave the base.

That gets clearer when he sneaks out.

And finds his own comatose body at the crash site …

•••••

Now, I’m gonna be honest, this ranks a lot higher than what little I’ve seen of The Island.

Even though that covers many of the same sort of ideas.

Are clones people or property, for example?

What happens when one is — as we all wondered, tonight, after the finale of Moon — the Inconvenient Individual?

And should we — do we — have any right to grow a sentient living human being, and keep them as an effective slave?

Who knows.

I do know that Moon is both an ideas rich, nicely directed and written, and well acted film.

And one that — with all its 2001: A Space Odyssey design influences — one that’s well worth watching.