Serenity is, perhaps, one of the most bizarrely-birthed movies of recent years. Based on the TV show Firefly, created by Joss Whedon (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse fame) it joins the elite club, also occupied by Star Trek: The Motion Picture, of movies spawned from cancelled TV series.
Firefly, ostensibly, is a “space western”. The clash of genres sounds bizarre here, but trust me: it works superbly. Nathan Fillion (an actor no-one in the UK has ever heard of, unfortunately, seeing as he’s arguably a better actor than Milo Ventipuckermouth off Heroes and his face looks less like a rat’s arse) stars as Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the spaceship Serenity, an ageing, cramped rustbucket that’s like the twenty-sixth century equivalent of a Victoria line Tube carriage.
So… I went to see Moon. It cost me about £25 in the end, including cinema tickets, travel expenses, and food. I did complain that that was a bit much for one trip to the cinema. I stand by that statement: it is a lot. That didn’t stop it being worth every penny.
I did review it, briefly, in the form of a video(YT – Vimeo) but that doesn’t really do it justice. It is just fucking brilliant.
The movie is set (unsurprisingly) on the Moon, and stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, a lonely lunar miner, working at a one-man base to monitor the machines extracting Helium-3, by that time Earth’s primary source of clean energy.
This is quite scientifically sound. Due to the fact the Moon has a very weak magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere, Helium-3 from the solar wind could well have become abundant in the Moon’s soil; He-3 is of great interest to nuclear fusion researchers.
Sam is assisted by Gerty, a robotic assistant that seems to be a bizarre cross between HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Cooker from A Grand Day Out. In a typical display of irony, Gerty is voiced by a man, Kevin Spacey, and his only way of expressing emotion is through his actions, such as a particularly touching scene where he tries to comfort Sam by patting him on the shoulder with a robotic arm, or a tiny screen embedded in his body which displays a crude approximation of his current mood in the form of a smiley-face emoticon that could have been culled directly from MSN Messenger.
Cut to the chase, and Sam starts feeling ill and having hallucinations, which eventually leads to him having an accident in a moon rover. He wakes up in the base’s infirmary to find himself being cared for… by a younger, sharper, angrier version of himself.
The plot isn’t particularly complicated (and I certainly won’t ruin it for you) but it’s a good one, and the storytelling is brilliant. It unfolds like a novel, and the picture doesn’t become fully clear until the end.
Both Rockwell and Spacey put in killer performances (which is just as well for Rockwell in particular, because the role was written for him) and the visual design is beautiful. Before directing Moon, Jones used to work on commercials and therefore has experience with stunning visual effects on a low budget: whilst the visual effects aren’t Star Trek-style, they’re sublimely beautiful.
The icing on the cake is the beautiful soundtrack by Clint Mansell. It’s minimalistic and somewhat atypical of sci-fi movies: the main theme is a simple, regular piano melody, unlike the banging, crashin and dramatic score for most other movies of this sort.
The computers, while having interfaces that look a little odd, aren’t too bad. There’s no extracomputational abilities in there, and while the password entry screen looks a little odd, computers never do anything silly, such as explode when they malfunction. Considering most of the machines would be embedded systems, the 2001-style interfaces make perfect sense.
Easily the best part of the movie, however, is Sam Rockwell’s magnificent performance (or performances) as the two Sams. He distils the differences between the two characters, and their shared loneliness and neuroticism, in such a beautiful way that if he doesn’t win Best Actor at the Oscars, I will personally bomb the Academy’s headquarters. It’s beyond words to describe it: it’s simply exquisite, and needs to be seen to be believed.
Overall, Moon is one of the best films, probably the best film I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely the best sci-fi movie of the last ten years, probably the last twenty, or maybe (at a stretch) thirty. It’s such a shame that its release is so narrow that the closest it was playing to me is Richmond. If there’s sufficient public demand, a wider release might be considered… and a wider release is certainly what this film deserves.
If you’re a fan of good sci-fi, a good psychological drama, good thrillers or simply want to see a good film, then you have to go and see Moon. Take a friend, travel across the country if you have to: there’s no excuse for you not to treat yourself to this. It is fucking brilliant.
I decided to go and see the independent sci-fi movie Moon, because I’m a fan of cerebral science fiction and, while Star Trek was great, it was rather… loud. Now, my local cinema, the Vue in Camberley, rarely shows independent films (the last time it did was Slumdog Millionaire, if I remember correctly) so I had a look on the Odeon web site.
I was anticipating they’d be playing it at Bracknell, and failing that, Guildford, because both are quite large cinemas and both have an independent movie club (or, at least, they did the last time I went there.) As it turned out, they weren’t. The closest they are playing Moon is in Richmond.Which is in London.
I quickly looked up train times, and it’ll cost me £10.90 for a super off-peak return from Camberley. Allegedly, the journey will be 57 minutes, but that doesn’t account for the time it takes me to get to the station, the change at Ascot, or the part actually finding the cinema on the other side.
But anyway… I digress. I did book a ticket at Richmond, and it was extortionate. £9.35 was the cost of the ticket, and they wanted an extra 75p for the privilege of paying by card. How else was I supposed to pay? Magic a cheque to Odeon’s headquarters? Beam a ten pound note across? Deliver it by hand?
So, with the overall £10.10 cost of the ticket, plus £10.90 transport, this trip to the cinema has now cost me £20. £20 for a trip to the damn cinema. I don’t mind the train ticket as much, because at least our train services are reasonably reliable… but £10.10 for one ticket to the cinema is way too much. Especially considering the food and drink they supply is stupendously expensive.
If anyone from Odeon ever reads this (which I doubt they will) here’s a message: I am paying £10.10 for a ticket, but reluctantly. I certainly won’t be doing it again. Why you couldn’t play the film at more cinemas is beyond me, as is the bizarre 75p ‘card handling fee’.
Of course, I could have torrented the film, and it wouldn’t have cost me a penny. I could have waited for it to come out on DVD. I’m probably the exception here, but if cinema tickets are so expensive (along with the food and sparse distribution), is it any wonder nobody pays to go to the movies any more?
