Moon (2009)

No Spoilers!! (Though it's an older movie, many haven't seen it, and I would hate to ruin its twists for anyone)

Director: Duncan Jones

A fairly quiet, still-underrated modern sci-fi classic featuring a brilliant performance by Sam Rockwell.

Rockwell plays the character Sam Bell, the lone worker on a moon station where he he oversees the sending off of a resource - known as helium-3 - that has helped vastly reduce Earth's reliance on other forms of energy. Sam is nearing the end of his three-year stint at the station, where he has worked in total isolation except for his computer/robot assistant GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). With only a few weeks to go, however, Bell makes a discovery about the station and possibly himself that throw his entire existence into a horrifying new light.

Moon is a great example of that rare science-fiction movie that plays things simple, without sacrificing the intelligent speculation and the connections to human emotion that make for the very best of the genre. With relatively little reliance on special effects or dazzling sets (though they are perfectly crafted), this movie does what the best sci-fo movies do: plausibly imagine the impacts on a person's psyche and emotions of the advancement of science and technology. It doesn't take long to establish that Sam's job of gathering and sending of helium-3 has been an invaluable boon to mankind as a whole. But as you learn of its cost to Sam himself, some serious questions arise. Questions that one could easily apply to many of the wonderful advances in technology in recent decades and those in the decades to come.

Sam chats with GERTY, his robot assistant and a welcome
departure from the artificial intelligence units that you
may be used to in sci-fi movies.

Being a movie with a single actor inhabiting the screen for about 99% of the entire time requires a certain skill level to keep an audience engaged, and Sam Rockwell was more than up to the task. The incredibly versatile Rockwell has to display a wide range of emotions here, all without any acting partners to play off of. I imagine that this is something which not many film actors could do, and it is captivating to watch Rockwell work through the wild ride that the story sends him on.

It's also worth noting how Moon echoes certain earlier, iconic space flicks, though modifying things to satisfying degrees. The notion of the "one savior in space" is one that's at the heart of cult sci-fi classic Silent Running (a film with a good premise but, in my opinion, some awful execution). And the presence and voice of GERTY can't help but remind one of HAL in landmark sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Again, though, GERTY is a rather welcome variation of HAL, which had long been overly mimicked to the point of unintentional parody.

My hat's really off to writer and director Duncan Jones for this one. I haven't seen any of his other movies (though I've heard that Source Code is quite good), but I'll be checking at least one of them out sooner rather than later. 

New Release! Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018)

Director: Martin McDonagh

A brilliantly biting, strikingly dark comedy that is noted director Martin McDonagh's best to date.

Taking place in the titular small town in roughly modern times, local woman Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) rents out three billboards lined up in a row along a little-used road near her home. On the billboards, she places three connected phrases, the ultimate message of which is to question the local sheriff, William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), as to why he has yet to find the person(s) responsible for the rape and murder of her teenage daughter, a horrific act which happened a year prior. The billboards set off a range of emotions in several of the townspeople, and they expose more than a few sentiments that have lingered slightly beneath the surface for many. Most of these sentiments are connected to deep anger, and the only person who might be angrier than Mildred herself is the none-too-bright deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist and homophobic thug who more often than he wishes finds himself in the middle of the firestorm that Mildred sets off with her billboards.

Anyone who has seen Martin McDonagh's other films In Bruges or Seven Psychopaths knows that he loves his humor pitch-dark, and Three Billboards is right in line with his previous movies. But while In Bruges was more overtly comic, and Seven Psychopaths had a much more bizarre, overall gonzo feel to it, Three Billboards includes more genuine, and genuinely moving, emotional turns. Yes, the plot turns and even sometimes the characters are quite obviously works of fiction, given the sometimes-extreme nature of what occurs and the main players' reactions. But it all has a mostly cohesive feel, and one that is helped along by plenty of downright hilarious (but again, dark) comedy. McDonagh seems to have found his best balance of his sly storytelling abilities and a certain poignancy with which he has only flirted in the past. The running theme he works with here is that of anger in several forms, and how people handle it in sometimes highly destructive ways, even when that anger is justified. This seems like a topic especially relevant to our current times.

Frances McDormand is an immense force in this movie,
utterly unafraid to face down anyone she sees as coming
between her and her desired justice. This includes head-
strong bully cops, like Sam Rockwell's Officer Dixon.

This movie has, along with grabbing a nomination for Oscar Best Picture, has also been nominated for a couple of acting Academy Awards. I can't argue, with Frances McDormand once again turning in a brilliant performance as the ever-salty, tough- and mad-as-hell Mildred. And Sam Rockwell is excellent as the mostly repugnant Officer Dixon, though I actually think that he has had a few performances even more worthy of recognition than this one, most notably in Moon. Though not nominated for any grand awards, Woody Harrelson also turns in a typically fine performance, and all of the bit players are great.

I will say that not everything in the movie fits perfectly into place. There are a few over-the-top or simply oddball scenes which feel too much at odds with the overall tone at times. And the change that Officer Dixon undergoes is a bit inexplicable in a few ways. Still, the movie's strengths do more than enough to outweigh such questionable elements.

At this point, I have seen eight of the nine nominees for Oscar Best Picture, and Three Billboards is among my favorites. Though it might not be as tight or quite as narratively polished as several of the other nominees, it is, along with Get Out, the gutsiest and most unique of them all. I give it a semi-outside chance at winning, but I'll be surprised if it wins the big award.