Moon is an auspicious debut from Duncan Jones (née Zowie Bowie), a talented new director who happens to be the son of David Bowie (let me officially be the first person to predict that every review of this film in the mainstream press will have the tagline “SPACE ODDITY!”). Sam Rockwell gives a truly remarkable performance as Sam Bell, a lunar miner who is nearing the end of his 3-year contract at a single-man mining outpost. His only companion is the station computer, Gertie, a straight-up HAL homage that tantalizingly suggests how a culture informed by decades of watching 2001 might choose to design a companion robot.

To say too much more about the plot would be to spoil its central conceit, and while I’m sure many reviewers will talk openly about it, and Tits & Gore is not a spoiler-free site, I want to preserve the surprise if at all possible at least until the film gets its theatrical release this coming June.

Suffice it to say that Jones admirably mixes together stock genre tropes, paying tribute to a number of classic science fiction features while retaining his own idiosyncratically dark vision. Familiar filmic concepts of the “clean future” and the “dirty future” are mixed together to create a unique atmosphere; the milieu is suitably claustrophobic, the cramped quarters of the mining station serving the film’s conceptual purposes while masking the shoestring budget. In fact, it may be hard to spare a glance at the meticulously designed sets with your eyes glued to Rockwell for the duration of the picture. His performance is utterly mesmerizing, inhabiting the role so completely that it is impossible to imagine any other actor having the chutzpah to pull it off.

Which is not to say that Moon is without its problems; the pacing is hardly consistent and Jones’ reliance on Rockwell tends to undersell his direction. Parts of the film veer dangerously close to identical thematic elements in Steven Soderbergh’s recent adaptation of Solaris, without being as emotionally potent. But what it lacks in originality is mostly compensated for by the sheer audacity of its central performance and the careful economy of its direction.

Moon may be dressed in familiar clothing, but it is a singular experience, a clever, darkly funny and genuinely moving journey into the nature of individuality. Jones is already at work on a second science fiction feature, and it is welcome indeed to see such a promising new talent continue to develop his voice by working in genre filmmaking!

[rating:7]

I was blown away by this debut feature from Lucrecia Martel, an Argentine director who had previously worked in television. Translated as “The Swamp” or “The Bog”, La Ciénaga explores the relationship between two cousins: Mecha, a bourgeois alcoholic drinking herself to death in the shadow of the mountains; and Tali, a harried city-dweller looking for a more temporary escape for a few days at Mecha’s house.

The title metaphor steers the film capably; the sweltering summer heat permeates every frame, as the two families wallow and suffer through both the temperature and the travails of their bankrupt existence. But the film’s crucifixion of the Argentine middle-class was, to my mind, secondary to a pervasive, pleasantly nostalgic focus on the burgeoning sexuality of Mecha and Tali’s children.

The roaring sexual tension between the children, not only the second cousins but the brothers and sisters, is beautifully conveyed by fine performances and a camera seemingly fueled by the jittery, horny fire of adolescence. There is nothing perverse or exploitative; sweaty and half clothed, the children can’t help but stare a little too long, to sneak into a shower together or lay sprawled atop a bed in a room filled with shade. It is a powerful and evocative sort of collective Bildungsroman, a confusing, memorable summer. Indeed, the summer’s climax is a rare, true shock; a sharp finale after a tense, meandering wade into the swamp.

[rating:8]

Mark Neale’s unusual biopic of William Gibson is a strange and polarizing film. Neale placed Gibson in a limousine wired for sound, equipped with several video cameras and outfitted with a laptop and cell phone (no mean feat for 2000) and sent him on a cross-country trip from California to New York, supplying him with questions along the way. The premise is solid gold, and Gibson is as much a halting poetic genius in person as he is in his brilliant novels. He stares out the window at the blurred trees, smoking cigarettes and holding forth on his past and the future of humankind. In a particularly poignant sequence, he romantically describes his first novel, Neuromancer, as taking place in “a world where there are no families”, as cryptic and beautiful a description of the book as has ever been made. His slow and metered responses showcase a truly incisive mind.

And yet, the film is drowned in stylistic flourishes and shitty editing that unnecessarily draw attention away from Gibson. Terrifyingly stupid cliches pop up every ten seconds, a sad irony considering the film’s focus on Gibson’s futurist tendencies. This is the man who coined the term “cyberspace”, and the internet was subsequently designed by programmers enamored of his ideas. Here is a man who has consistently envisioned the future of humankind under the guise of literature for over 30 years, and yet, conversely, Neale buries Gibson’s observations in 30-year-old video art trickery, from painfully period-dating technological montages to reversing the flow of traffic in Gibson’s limo windows.

Indeed, the stylistic choices are so damaging as to completely derail the simple power of Gibson’s words. His speech is halting and quiet, which makes him, apparently, not exciting enough, and so layer after layer of bullshit has to be slathered on to hold the imaginary film-goer’s attention. Ultimately, the film’s infantile visuals can be a sincere struggle to tolerate. Maybe No Maps For These Territories would have made a better audio-book, considering how poorly Neale treats what should have been a sure-fire high concept.

[rating:5]