MOON starring Sam Rockwell, dir. Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of David)

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/moon/

haven't seen it yet, but it looks amazing for a sci-fi film that only cost $5 mil.

also, Sam Rockwell <3 <3

i saw this at tribs. it's not all that.

that's disappointing

actually this just looks like a cheaper "Sunshine", and as long as it's at least slightly better than that film, I'd prob love it anyway. Is it?

If I was stuck on the moon with Kevin Spacey mouthing off to me I'd go crazy too.

yeah casting spacey as a HAL-type AI is way distracting because it's so fucking obviously spacey

I prefer Sunshine, tho the first 2/3 of this are very watchable, esp if you like two Sam Rockwells acting together.

But I did figure out the twist, and after it was revealed, the film went on for 20 minutes to not much effect.

It was either use Kevin Spacey or Kevin Mooney.

Kevin Smith would cause me to blow up the whole moon.

a moonage daydream

I was just gonna say I'd enjoy to spend some time with Kevin Smith but then I thought about the implications of being stuck on the moon with him and I was Ned OTM. I think tbf to Kevin Smith he would probably say the same thing.

dir. Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of David)

should have been Moon Unit Zappa amirite

I'm really excited about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIexG8179K8

the best musical moment involves "Walking on Sunshine"

I prefer Sunshine, tho the first 2/3 of this are very watchable, esp if you like two Sam Rockwells acting together.

But I did figure out the twist, and after it was revealed, the film went on for 20 minutes to not much effect.

― Dr Morbius, Saturday, June 13, 2009 5:05 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i felt he couldn't really decide whether to make an identity-driven psychodrama or a straight genre thriller and the results feel a little wobbly. i liked the grunginess of the space station. i didn't really like the spacey-bot.

Want to see!

The Sam Rockwells are clones being sent videos from a fake wife/child so they don't realize the truth about their situation?

Trailer looks a lot better than the Apple link, which had a distinct Dr. Who feel.

Thought this shit was pretty good. Yeah it tails off at the end a little but Rockwell is as watchable as ever and the design/effects were really nice and it was fun to see something new with a 1960s paranoid sci fi feel to it.

Bang up for seeing this.

ditto

saw this today - amazing performance by rockwell, no surprises there. thought the plot was surprising in terms of not playing to (my) expectations - i kept feeling like something creepy was gonna happen eg. gerty turns psycho, the clones spend the movie trying to kill each other, that kind of thing, but it was a lot more subtle than that and there was no real 'bad guy'. rockwell should be winning more prizes, he seems to be so underrated.

Was liking the tone and pace of the movie until the clones thing screwed up the plot for me - especially that very last soundbite in the very last shot (literally the last 5 seconds of the film). Why oh why did they put in a rush limbaugh-type radio broadcast?

Awesome movie. Morbius, well done for spotting a nonexistent twist

lollllll

thank you for saying that, i was a bit confused

liked this pretty solidly, justine otm about the movie not going in several obvious directions

Why oh why did they put in a rush limbaugh-type radio broadcast?

I thought that was to show the reaction of earthers to this guy's claims of a clone warehouse on the moon.

yeah, it basically confirmed a happy ending of sorts

second time around is better i think, i found it more satisfying emotionally. there were a few moments where i was thinking 'this sort of feels like it started off as a short,' but on the whole, i think it's a fantastic film. i think both sam rockwell and sam rockwell's butt deserve best actor nods.

there was no real 'bad guy'

i don't think so

i mean, i kinda think what makes it so incredible is the tension the clones have to deal with, you sorta have to hate this guy who sold himself to this company but at the same time by doing that you're hating yourself?

what i meant is that the mining company is sort of the 'bad guy' in one sense, but they're always out of the frame and their part in the story isn't that crucial. i really loved that the story didn't have a classic antagonist.

loved this

especially all the directions it didn't go, as people have mentioned. in a different movie they would have woken up a bunch of clones and killed the rescue party to take their ship. also liked how the robot wasn't omniscient/wired into the whole station, it was just a robot.

http://suburbanknights.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/clonewars.jpg

This was ok. Fairly boring in parts but nice performance(s) from Rockwell. Weirdly touching at the end too. ANd how come these kind of low budget sci-fi movies always look better than the mega-budget blockbusters? Money is no substitute for imagination i guess

i liked the boring parts

Thinking about seeing this after work sometime this week before it disappears from theaters. (Or rather the one theater it's been at for the last six weeks.)

Awesome movie. Morbius, well done for spotting a nonexistent twist

SPOILER, I guess

OK, given the initial setup, both of the principal Rockwells being clones was entirely suspected all along by you, Niles Caulder, if that is your name, and thus doesn't constitute a twist? Well, I'm in awe. You must be a student of Robert freakin' McKee.

Kept waiting for Gerty to turn psycho like HAL. Glad he didn't.

yeah he was a brobot

(spoiler)

But they reveal like 20 minutes into the movie that he's a clone, and the rest is figuring out what's real and what's not, and what they're going to do. 20 minutes from the end is when they're plotting about escaping and the only real "twist" at that point (which is really well-projected) is that the 'original' clone isn't going to go anywhere, because he's sick and dying.

I really thought it was a strength that instead of making it a suspense/mystery, it let the trailer for the movie carry that and you find out fairly early why things are going sideways.

enjoyed this, despite some borrowings from other (very) notable sci fi flicks. Once I figured out that it was part comedy, part mystery, it became much better. What I loved about this movie was that it was consistently surprising, original. Even Sam Rockwell was surprisingly good! Looking forward to whatever director Jones does next.

'even sam rockwell was surprisingly good'

what?!? when is he ever bad?

liked how it presented itself as an existential malaise then developed into a tightly plotted thing

i like sam rockwell! I'm just not convinced he can always bring something to a part that isn't the "sam rockwell carefree/less wisecracking slacker" role. still, i think this movie is probably the best performance I've seen from him.

he was rad as an idiot in the assassination of jesse james

he was also rad as a fuckin evil child-raping/murderer in the green mile

Saw this tonight. Awesome. SHIT loads of 70s sci-fi present in the art design.

Really liked this. Rockwell *superb* and the sets and models terrific.

A plot point that I may have misread: were all the clones being killed off by radiation sickness after a couple of years, hence the need for replacements? There was a sequence where the first clone watched a load of videos of his predecessors and they were all in various states of illness and saying "my hair's falling out" etc. So after three years they were expected to be worn out and the death-chamber was there to maintain the illusion that they would go home?

i wondered if they weren't designed to die after three years (maybe the water was poisoned/irradiated?), since they couldn't remain mentally stable for longer than that.

yah, built-in obsolesence. like replicants.

Yeah, maybe that was the point. It certainly seemed that the clones were expected to have a limited lifespan.

Also, I found the relationship between Sam and GERTY strangely moving - obviously there was intended to be an emotional element, but the emphasis on GERTY's duty of care for all the clones and tenderness with the decrepit original Sam was really well done - the robotic claw on shoulder moment was especially touching.

there were many good things in it, just suffered from narrative malaise. It's a "first film."

I personally made a joke of Spacey casting as riff on Douglas Rain's mincing HAL voice.

Were they really lasting three years even? It had been 15 years since the videos Rockwell was watching, but there were spaces for hundreds of clones under the base.

i just assumed the company planned on keeping their profitable setup going for a long, long time

Something I didn't go a bundle on was Clint Mansell's score, which was pretty dull to these ears, as well as being overly portentous. Probably because it's almost a direct parallel I kept thinking of Grandaddy's "Miner At The Dial-A-View" instead.

I liked it. But I also am a big fan of Silent Running. This movie is way more like Silent Running than 2001.

Also, loved the snapshot of the "rescue party". Total interstellar thug crew. Made me LOL.

Heh, I LOLed at the exact same moment in the theater. Yeah, there's at least a few blatant direct homages to Silent Running in it too which I appreciated.

Were they really lasting three years even? It had been 15 years since the videos Rockwell was watching, but there were spaces for hundreds of clones under the base.

Remember there were also at least four other rovers shown in the movie - and the introduction implied that the company has been "strip mining" a good portion of the moon by this point, so there could be dozens or hundreds of clones active at one point, all unaware of each other (since Gerty was telling them constantly to ignore themselves).

I kept thinking of Grandaddy's "Miner At The Dial-A-View"

me too!!

(poss spoiler but I think this has all been covered upthread anyway)

What I didn't pick up on is whether the "father" on the vidphone is the original Sam (i.e. he didn't die of radiation sickness - he's gotta have gone, or the messages wouldn't have been filmed - so the clones just disintegrate - deliberate, or limitation to cloning tech?) or some other guy. Also, whether he knew about the army of clones, but I guess that was deliberately unaddressed.

When we left the cinema, a stranger came up to us and said "were you at the film?" and we nodded and he went "what the hell was all that about?" and we looked at each other and said "I dunno but I really enjoyed it". Some reviews said it was "slow" but there were plot points which only clicked into place for me after leaving so I wouldn't have wanted it much faster. I wanted it not to end there, but I don't know where else it could've gone, it was conceptually very complete as it was.

i thought that the guy on the vidphone is o.g. sam, but he probably never even went to the moon. they just used his genetic material to create their corporate clone army, whether he knew about it or not.

I was thinking he had to have been for his wife to talk to him up there, but I guess not necessarily since the wife is out of the real-time picture in possibly suspicious circumstances.

Jones and Rockwell said in a recent interview that yes, the original Sam did in fact know about it and effectively sold his soul to the devil. The one on the videophone is definitely the original, living out his retirement days on Earth.

It's not clear in the film that this is so - I think this was intentional, since Moon seemed to avoid having a solid antagonist or villain (aside from the vague entity of the Lunar corporation and the "rescue team").

I like the unaddressedness (so should possibly not be ruining it on the internet): lots of things to think about after watching. I'll be interested to see if I'm still thinking about it after a few weeks, or how it stands up to repeat viewings. I don't know if deliberately unanswered tangents = more or less to pick up on with multiple viewings, but I feel there's still a lot left to notice.

btw I don't remember exactly how it went, but I do think it was one of those "in their mind" kind of answers, they sort of left the interpretation up to the viewer, I think.

yeah, i hope at this point nobody reads this thread without having seen the film already, it's well into 100% spoiler discussion at this point

i enjoyed this movie. but it was not great. i would like to see the proposed sequels.

"exterior" shots (done w/models) of lunar landscape were gorgeous.

also liked how the robot wasn't omniscient/wired into the whole station, it was just a robot.

i think they were a bit inconsistent on where gerty's powers began and ended. but i still liked it a lot.

There really is not enough here for a repeat viewing

i would imagine so.

And that's ok really.

"enjoyed this, despite some borrowings from other (very) notable sci fi flicks. Once I figured out that it was part comedy, part mystery, it became much better. What I loved about this movie was that it was consistently surprising, original."

I don't think I've ever seen enough CLONE films, but apart from that I didn't think it stayed with an SF idea for long enough, too busy borrowing - hence the slight feeling of disappointment that it couldn't really add anything of its own.

i agree with morbs. this movie just wasn't filled out enough... or something. it did not satisfy me.

It was definitely underwhelming on a big screen but I bet it would play fine on Fox Sunday Matinee.

I admired the emptiness, and look forward to seeing it again on DVD.

^^ they should put that on a sticker on the dvd box

were all the clones being killed off by radiation sickness after a couple of years, hence the need for replacements? There was a sequence where the first clone watched a load of videos of his predecessors and they were all in various states of illness and saying "my hair's falling out" etc. So after three years they were expected to be worn out and the death-chamber was there to maintain the illusion that they would go home?

That's what I took away from it. Especially given the human-unfriendly ergonomics of the base: no real recreation, beans for food, GERTY's happy/sad/uncertain face screen (some focus group at Lunar Industries Inc. concluded that GERTY was too-unfriendly looking - too late for building a face, so just retrofit an emoticon screen). Basically it was just the bare-minimum to keep the Helium-3 moving and that's it. Typically corporate.

Silent Running is an obvious touchstone, but a lot reminded me of Dark Star - disheveled video logs, terminal boredom, things falling apart.

yes, DS obv one influence

i just don't get how this incredibly important installation that provides power to all of earth needed only person at a time to run it

there were other rovers out there, definitely implied there were a bunch of these clones working on the moon without contacting each other (or kept in ignorance via Gerty)

Completely disagree with the point upthread about the ending, I thought it was a great way to finish it. Bookends it nicely with the Lunar Industries advert at the beginning (which itself was great because it had the voiceover saying something about how the moon harvesting supplies 70% of the world's energy needs whilst the map just shows North America).

morbs and slocki otm: this was good, but not very filling. rockwell was great, but i love rockwell, so

at first i was disappointed by how quickly i called the 'twist,' but the film v quickly made it clear that the twist was not actually a twist at all, and ought to have been apparent to anyone that's even remotely familiar with the tropes of sci fi.

Enjoyed it--was not brilliant, but was pretty good. Reminded me of 'Sunshine' in being a low-budget film that doesn't forget that space is BEAUTIFUL.

Duncan Jones + Jake Gyllenhaal <3 <3 <3

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118011029.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Hm. What about the Blade-Runner-in-Berlin movie called Mute he was said to be making next?

From the end of the link:

Jones is currently writing the screenplay of the upcoming film "Mute," which he will also direct.

Is it a silent movie?

Duncan Jones + Jake Gyllenhaal <3 <3 <3

I thought you were suggesting that they were dating.

Ah, thanks Ned, I'm an idiot. "Writing the screenplay"?! Damn, I thought it was good to go.

this movie owned. Anyone know where I can watch Whistle?? Apparently it's going to be on the moon dvd but surely i can watch it on internet somewhere.

I shall be watching Moon on DVD tonight.

Fancy watching this again, tbh - may add to (enormous) Festivus dvd list.

Anyone know where I can watch Whistle??

It is on the DVD. It isn't that great tbh. Nicely made but clunky dialogue scenes and the plot doesn't really work. Still worth watching, I guess.

In the Q&As on the DVD Jones mentions twice that Mute would be his next film. I don't know what happened but obviously that's not the case now, unfortunately.

ARGH FUCKING FUCK IT

?

DVD will not plY except with commentary. May burn Exeter to the ground. Been up since 4am and have been looking forward to this for months.

maybe you should take a nap

this was everything i hoped it would be - space loneliness and two Sam Rockwells being amazing for two hours.

Also, I found the relationship between Sam and GERTY strangely moving - obviously there was intended to be an emotional element, but the emphasis on GERTY's duty of care for all the clones and tenderness with the decrepit original Sam was really well done - the robotic claw on shoulder moment was especially touching.

yes this + justine's comment upthread abt the narrative confounding expectations otm. I mean in the beginning, you really would think that with all the cryptic answers, GERTY was typical AI gone rogue but then it turns out that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do - caring for the mental well-being of Sam and all Sams. makes sense to use a voice like kevin spacey's then for the reversal to work.

It is a great film. Like everyone else, I loved the sleight of hand that made us think that GERTY was going to be another HAL when he ends up actually being the motor of the plot's resolution.

Liked the movie a lot, but I'm really digging the soundtrack

really enjoyed this.

i would like to see the proposed sequels.

― amateurist, Saturday, August 8, 2009 1:37 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark

"Earth"?

Van Allen Belt

Earth - as in, that's where Sam goes next...

wd be interested to see this aesthetic applied to a not-too-distant-future earth. (presumably with more $$$ to throw around this time).

xp - what's a Van Allen Belt? ok, wikipedia'd... i don't get it :(

ok just googled the proposed sequel and it's set in Berlin, in the world of this film. cool!

Bump.

Finally got to watch this the other night; very good, excellent aesthetic in terms of design, loved the use of models, really nice plot conceit, but FUCK ME Sam Rockwell wow.

Okay this was pretty great EXCEPT for the little annoying news radio coda which needlessly intrudes at the end and kind of ruins it ever so slightly. More Silent Running than Sunshine thankfully.

"were all the clones being killed off by radiation sickness after a couple of years, hence the need for replacements?"

I wasn't clear that it was radiation sickness/poisoning (and that it was intentional or just a by product of the solar radiation) or just that the clones were made with a shorter lifespan Blade Runner-stylee.

I just assumed it was Dolly the sheep style.

Longer they live more they work out. I liked how simple this was, didn't find it v mystifying (not slighting anyone, just thought it was a really nicely done small story)

It looked like radiation sickness, but that doesn't make sense. They'd be protected from UV the whole time (in the base, in the rovers, in the spacesuits). Must've been some planned/unplanned obsolescence, clonewise.

Not quite sure how someone on the "far side of the Moon" gets such a magnificent view of the full Earth. Guess Zowie Bowie never heard of synchronous rotation. The shot was unnecessary anyway -- we could've listened to Sam crying in the rover without being hit over the head with how far away he is from home.

little annoying news radio coda

otm

I think the point was that Sam had driven well beyond where the base was (the far side) to get a clear line of sight to get a signal?

I agree abt the radiation sickness? Fine for three years and then completely falling apart in the last two weeks?

Just saw this, went into it with high expectations, and I hate to say it but it was pretty mediocre. Sam Rockwell was good, but there just isn't much to the movie. Oh well.

very promising opening, then got progressively less interesting as the movie wore on. ending was telegraphed at least an hour ahead of time, by which point I was already beginning to lose interest. looked marvelous tho, at least.

like a cross between Stanislaw Lem/Silent Running with a shitty ending

i liked this!

"like a cross between Stanislaw Lem/Silent Running with a shitty ending"

The only shitty part of the ending is the crappy voice-over news thing. The rest of its fine (albeit predictable.)

or just that the clones were made with a shorter lifespan Blade Runner-stylee

that's what I figured it was

Just saw this, went into it with high expectations, and I hate to say it but it was pretty mediocre

otm

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2010/04/01/duncan_jones_is_unhappy_about_moon/

did someone point out that one of the read-outs that kept appearing read "sattelite link lost"?

Enjoyed this movie for the most part, but some serious reservations about the setup kept me from really liking it:

1. Is it really cheaper to secretly engineer human clones to live (and die) on this base then to just have the base be totally automated (and have your rescue ship visit in case of malfunction)?

2. It might have made more sense (and been more dramatic/lonely) if this base had been in the outer solar system or another system entirely where the travel time would explain the clone effort.

3. There must have been 50-100+ clones, does a company really think it can keep a secret like that for 100+ years? That the moon won't be developed at all?

i feel like if a movie commits to a big lie, then the smaller lies fall away -- like the moon as energy source conceit feels bigger than any clone issues, or a robot sounding exactly like Kevin Spacey.

The moon as energy source is an actual theory.

not very far-fetched either

helium isotopes or something, right?

http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html

"Elements known to be present on the lunar surface include, among others, oxygen (O), silicon (Si), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), aluminium (Al), manganese (Mn) and titanium (Ti). Among the more abundant are oxygen, iron and silicon. The oxygen content is estimated at 45%"

^^^you can make a lot of stuff with these elements. and then there's solar power, which would also be more easily harvested on the moon, since there's no atmosphere in the way.

I just think the need for the clones would have been more logical had it been set (much) farther away. People have already been up in space for 14+ months, so why design this whole insanely complex secret system of 3-year life-cycle clones to take care of something that seems mostly automated and is only 3 days away anyway? I'd say that's the main conceit (and it doesn't work).

The stowaway trip back to earth wouldn't have been possible from further out. But the surviving-clone going back to earth to break open the story was kind of a weak plot element anyway.

I kind of wish they'd been mining a nickel-iron asteroid parked in geosynchronous orbit, or maybe mining a comet for water.

was Chompsky to obvious

too obvious, I mean

considered it, but yeah

"why design this whole insanely complex secret system of 3-year life-cycle clones to take care of something that seems mostly automated and is only 3 days away anyway?"

corporations being inhumane dicks for no practical reason much more plausible than a future where it is profitable to mine the moon for energy. Maybe the sequel can have a gargantuan Sam Rockwell clone physically digging out the diamond that's in the center of Jupiter(?) for the de beers company with his bare hands.

Haha, I like that pitch. But really, I'm criticizing the corporation. Gotta be cheaper and less complicated and less than 95% likely to eventually be accused of crimes against humanity by just putting robots up there.

The first trailer for Duncan Jones' Source Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKtr9ZAooc8

Getting Deja Vu.

fuck yes!!

I liked Moon but I really thought the guy had far too much talent to be paying constant homages to previous classics, and then announcing that his next movie will pay homages to a previous classic. The whole concept for Moon was pretty original in the first place, Jones - fuck this "forever in your debt" shit and go all the way with your own ideas.

I'm not seeing an awful of Blade Runner in that, as per his claims about a year ago though.

xxp lol

But really, I'm criticizing the corporation. Gotta be cheaper and less complicated and less than 95% likely to eventually be accused of crimes against humanity by just putting robots up there.

right.

in the intro of moon they say they are mining for helium3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNzf6erIhlw

that would be doable with today's technology and there are parties interested in doing that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Extraterrestrial_supplies

some say a moon base would cost like 35 billion + 7 billion upkeep per year and let's say the mining tech would cost as much: it would be, like, a 70 billion job.

now, where do you even start if you want to make a clone with built-in memories... for a start i presume it would take nothing less than 100 billion investment in cog sci research and dev ... for better and for worse clones like that are not happening anytime soon imo.

that'll show him!(?)

o_O

uh i agree with spencer (?)

like, making clones would probably cost more than the entire mining project.

ha! sorry. Thought the quote was from a Jones interview or something. Really just amused that it seemed to come from nowhere, but I've looked upthread now.

So it turns out this film is a documentary or something.

This was fun for awhile - and in places thrilling, like when you realise the newly woken clone is actually gonna cooperate with our decaying hero - but wow what a let down.

They foreshadow the arrival of the rescue ship / hit squad for at least HALF THE MOVIE and then... ???? You don't even see them! I felt certain that a major dust-up was in the cards and I even dared to anticipate a faceoff between clone buddies vs corporate baddies. But no. And we never get an explanation of why the clones deteriorate. Of course we can come up with our own explanations but it's a goddamn scifi thriller flick, SHOW IT. I mean, I'm not even going to get into all the things that fall apart once you think too hard about them.

Spaceybot a real missed opportunity to do something new.

that may have been budget restrictions rather than choice

you mean not having a fight?

Cause as far as Spaceybot goes, it's a computer voice, why pay for Spacey

i mean the rescue ship/hit squad. if i understand what you're suggesting, that's new set/location, cast and maybe an action sequence. seems like something that would be a totally different scale of production to the rest of the film.

Definitely an action sequence! Same set though. They show up, binga bang with the hit squad for awhile and then GERTY saves them at the last second somehow.

i just didn't think this film was exciting enough. it wasn't bad, but it had been talked up as something more.

needed willis/affleck and maybe peter jackson rewrite

Look I would have had much less of a problem with the ending if they hadn't signposted the arrival of the baddest group of interlunar bounty hunters this side of Jupiter for HALF THE FILM. I retrospect I suppose it was a device to force the decision about who to leave in the rover. But like... what a letdown.

That would have been a terrible idea. Would have ruined the pacing of the entire movie, and not add anything in the way of story. Like Nate mentions way upthread the photo of the 'rescue team' says it all.

The pacing of the entire movie points to a showdown! Look I'm not saying you have to have a Willis style shoot em up but it just felt empty at the end to me. And my conclusion is that the promised arrival of the rescue ship is the reason why.

Oh, one thing mentioned upthread regarding how long it took between clones. You're all assuming that the three years thing is actually true. But I wouldn't be surprised if these guys only last for like two months before their shitty, mass-produced bodies broke down. And everything else is an implanted fiction - that they've been there for three years, etc.

i struggle to see how a climactic bounty hunter throwdown would fit in this movie at all.

use your imagination

I mean, it's the movie itself that says there are bounty hunters. And that they look like badasses. And that they are coming. And that they will kill any Sam who knows the secret. So... not really a stretch?

well yeah. i don't recall anticipating a showdown at all. seems like tracer was watching alien 3.

not really a stretch to imagine staying the fuck out of their way iv possible

I dunno man, the new Sam looked ready to rumble after all that time on the punching bag

Something else I wondered - why erase GERTY'S memory banks? Sam becomes a whistleblower on Earth - surely that data would help? Otherwise the company can just deny everything.

apart from him actually being a clone?

Heh yes, good point.

Still - I wasn't real clear on the point of shutting down GERTY's memory.

I may be turning into the Tuomas of thinky sci fi movies.

lol

Been a while since i saw it so not really able to argue the in-depths. I didn't feel the ending was a cop-out though, i was happier that it wasn't join-the-dots stuff

Just caught this - had no expectations (didn't even realise it was D. Jones until after) but really liked it. Many homages to past greats in shots and design etc, but stood on its own feet, I thought. Could have done with a more miserable ending, though. Also rolling my eyes at some of the comments above: an element of the plot revealed in the first third of the film is not a twist, people.

Of course it can be. M Night Shyamalan didn't invent the twist. (I believe it was C. Checker?)

Of course it can be

Eh, a film can be 'full of twists and turns', I guess, but the way people were saying 'I totally got the twist straight away' or 'the twist was a bit lame' would imply they were treating it as a twist-in-the-tail type twist.

M Night Shyamalan didn't invent the twist.

Lol, wut? Where exactly did you pick that up from in my post, you maniac?

Based on my scientific viewing of 1.5 Shyamalan films, his twist reveals are the absolute final narrative event of the movie

would imply they were treating it as a twist-in-the-tail type twist.

It's a twist-in-the-upper-torso type twist.

Based on my scientific viewing of 1.5 Shyamalan films, his twist reveals are the absolute final narrative event of the movie

That isn't at issue. What is at issue is that you somehow went "emil.y is saying that films have a twist at the end" -> "M. Night Shyamalan films have twists at the end" ∴ "emil.y thinks M. Night Shyamalan invented the twist". THIS LOGIC IS HIGHLY FAULTY.

It's a twist-in-the-upper-torso type twist.

Genuine, actual lol.

Still - I wasn't real clear on the point of shutting down GERTY's memory.

i think it was to give the escapee some time. if the corporation found out what happened they could have, say, shot down the escape pod thing.

soundtrack just filled me with fremdschämen.

The World's End has an event about a third of the way in that upends the narrative and tonal expectations set by the entire preceding part of the film, and I was very very pleased not to be expecting, and thus to be surprised, by it.

Midnight In Paris has an event in the first third of the film that upends the narrative and tonal expectations set by the entire preceding part of the film, and I was very very pleased not to be expecting, and thus to be surprised, by it.

Neither of these present themselves as a justification or raison d'etre of the entire work, but they still "twist" the story and the viewer's experience away from what was previously established.

Super-detailed blog post about typography and other set details in Moon (warning, SPOILERS, etc): http://typesetinthefuture.com/moon/

Someone from the post-production team comments re the blog post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7244517

and more interviews/posts from designers here and here:
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/moon/
http://www.gavinrothery.com/moon-blog-index/

which I haven't even looked at yet because information overload

the reviews for his new netflix film are so spectacularly awful that it's intriguing, somehow. From various reviews:

Mute review – Duncan Jones's sci-fi thriller is a Netflix disaster
...
Mute, a spectacularly blown shot at redemption.
...
Alexander Skårsgard, Leo has been rendered unable to speak by one of those throat-slashing Amish motorboating accidents that are always in the news.
...
Not merely tonally incoherent, the film’s denouement utterly defies comprehension; the barrage of inexplicable twists that closes out the film contains one of the more unexpected and staggeringly mishandled depictions of pedophilia in recent memory.
...
Mute represents the nadir of [Netflix's] paradigm-shifting strategy.
...
A good word to describe Mute might be berserk.
...
when the two plot elements finally combine, it’s in a woefully confusing way that manages to be both boring and melodramatic, while giving paedophilia one of the most curious cinematic treatments on record.
...
at no point in the film does his quest feel as if it actually matters.
...
the story is a maze of dead ends and non-sequiturs that are never quite interesting enough to seem purposefully confusing.
...
Mute is a punishing watch.

Uh, wow.

William Gibson loved it, but I'm suspicious he has terrible taste in most things.

Netflix's track record for features (save for Gerald's Game and the only so-so Mudbound) really has been awful

Okja was enjoyable.

Sadly this wasn't. What a fucking mess.

Okja was a cute thirty minutes of oooo-ing over the hippo and then turned off

I randomly watched this for the first time last night and really enjoyed it. Previously, I'd refused to watch any scifi film made this millennium after the trauma of enduring the execrable Interstellar but this gave me lite Primer vibes and I loved it

Surprised no one itt mentioned the conspicuous and confusing presence of not only 80s music ("Walking on Sunshine," the generic 80s hair metal Sam wakes to) but also the use of The Clapper to turn off the tv

People who enjoyed this might like I Am Mother.

Moon was a great choice for the whole family early in the pandemic, before the kids (and we) realized that, no, it wasn't exactly a strict lockdown and no, they didn't have to be stuck inside watching movies with us all the time.