Moon

Duncan Jones' "Moon" is the best sci-fi movie to come along in a generation or two. Sam Rockwell gives an unadulterated tour de force performance as Sam Bell, an isolated astronaut working a three-year corporate contract mining job on the moon in this must-see sci-fi thriller. Concept is everything is good science fiction, and screenwriter Nathan Parker, working from a story by Jones, discreetly teases conventions of the genre, and flips stereotypes, while playing with suspense in wholly unexpected ways. Drawing liberally on a collection of references from "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Solaris," the filmmakers take a refreshingly retro approach to special effects and allow the story's inherent drama and political satire to well up from its internal sense of conflict. Two-week's away from finally returning to Earth, Sam is a one-man harvester of Helium 3, an energy producing gas that he frequently shoots back in canister rockets to Earth. However, the arrival of Sam's replacement worker presents a crisis of identity and reality that is more than a little surprising.
Rated R. 97 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)