MIFF review: Moon (2009)

Genre: Thoughtful Sci-Fi

Director: Duncan Jones

Moon manages to quietly reference a swathe of the classic sci-fi canon and still pull off something original. 2001, Star wars, Solyaris, Aliens, Dark Star are all reverberating around Moon’s small setting. A memorable, gentle film about isolation, future fears, and the things we hang onto to keep us going.

Nice Soviet lookin' poster

The robot is voiced by Kevin Spacey. He kind of annoyed me, because I kept thinking it was just Kevin Spacey doing a voice of a robot

Moon is beautifully shot, utilising a dreamlike soundtrack, and a tone that shifts seamlessly from creepy isolation, buddy movie, and to escape movie with complete coherence. The moon exteriors are original and blend CGI and scale models in a way which avoids artificiality and results in a warm, believable aesthetic. Equally believable is the performance by the often underestimated Sam Rockwell, who plays the only real role in this film as a sun harvester, 2 weeks away from completing his contract and returning to earth (and his ridiculously hot girlfriend!). And It’s a role he plays multiple times during the film (for an explanation, you’ll just have to see it)

To top all this off its the directorial debut from David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, who has been pretty quiet up until now! Already in IMDB’s top 50 sci-fi films, Moon has joined the canon of quiet, contemplative futurist film making.

Another Big recommend, ****

Ronan Macewan

Other MIFF reviews:

10 conditions of love

North (Nord)

The Girlfriend Experience

Anna

Weekend reading #4

And so another weekend is upon, each disappearing like so many grapes down a Roman emperors alimentary canal. What interesting things have happened this week?

Here is an illuminating interview with a film poster designer gifted with a wry humour and humbleness about his craft. {link}

Some great looking new films coming from England with Film4 funding. Including one from my favourite comedian, Chris Morris, and other one about Scottish aliens!  {link} 

 

While the shoot is a wrap, Spike Jonze’s blog for Where the Wild Things Are lives on. {link}

And here is the HD trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet: (I personally think the monsters aren’t menacing enough)

 

David Lynch has a promising looking interview project, here is the introduction by the silver fox himself {link}

 

Film review: Hunger (2008)

Hunger is a movie with little in the way of contextualisation. We are thrown into direct confrontation with the characters, imprisoned members of the Provisional Irish Republic Army who undertook a horrific and fatal hunger strike in 1981. Set mainly in the total institution of prison, very little effort is made to humanise either the guards or the prisoners. They simply exist in a state of dull suffering punctuated by moments of exceptional brutality. Hunger is very violent, but it is without the sexualised gratuity and scopophilic delight often, explicitly or implicitly, utilised by other films. The loneliness is palpable, from the guard who eats alone, either ignored or ignoring, to the two prisoners locked isolation cells and offering little verbal relief to each or the viewer. Both are trapped; the prison guards by duty of employment and the prisoners by belief and physical incarceration.

Steve McQueen, is an accomplished video artist and Turner prize winner, not to be confused with the 1960s movie star. In his first feature film, he offers a lens which is harsh, but which has a soft eye for detail. When a guard has a cigarette outside after a prison bashing, his face set in a scowl of disgust, snow falls sublimely slowly in front him, offering a purifying cloak to a dark moment of self reflection. The isolation cells, with its walls covered in piss, shit and blood, look like, and are later turned into, a piece of abstract expressionism, while also highlighting the inhumanity experienced by these prisoners.

McQueen won the Camera d’Or (best first time director) for Hunger at Cannes this year and it’s clearly warranted; a 20 minute, one-shot, take with Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) in which he justifies, to a Catholic priest, his beliefs and determination to starve himself to death is a truly exceptional cinematic moment. Learning and reciting with naturalism such a long tract of dialogue is just one of the ways the director has pushed his actors. Bobby Sands undergoes a grotesque and dramatic transformation as his body decomposes in front of the viewer, which took two months off camera preparation by actor Fassbinder. The denial of the prisoners ‘to wear the clothes of a criminal’ results in the cast spending the entire film clothed in rags.

The incredible central scene

Hunger is a disturbing, unsentimental portrait of modern Martyrdom. It’s outside the traditional biopic genre, offering little in th

Hungry

e way of political contextualisation, apart from the odd, archived audio polemics of Margaret Thatcher and the obligatory pre-credits white-sentences-on-black-background epilogue. Mcqueen, on the basis of Edna Walsh’s script, selects a more visceral approach which is likely to leave the viewer unsettled and frustrated. We are as cut off as the prisoners, who practically have no ability to update themselves on the social and political and milieu that put them there. The starkness of the situation demands a humanitarian response, and is timely in light of Australia’s part in the denial of political rights and inhumane incarceration of modern day terrorists.

-Steve McQueen in Interview magazine

–Steve McQueen interviewed about hunger in Time out Sydney

–Current exhibition (‘Queen and Country: war portrait stamp project) {2}

Ronan MacEwan

First Published 2008

Short interview with Steve.