The Thousands

Movies from Solaris to 2001: A Space Odyssey convey the existential terror in the immensity of space. Descartes’s maxim "I think therefore I am" has always been a defiant cry into the abyss, but space also leaves you claustrophobically alone with your thoughts. As the Alien tagline went, "In space, no one can hear you scream."

Elegantly, Moon makes the nature of humanity seem both achingly self-evident and tantalisingly elusive. Astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is two weeks from finishing a lonely three-year stint manning the Sarang lunar mine, his only communication through recorded bulletins to and from Earth and interactions with a robotic assistant, GERTY (the wonderfully deadpan Kevin Spacey). He’s going a little stir-crazy, accidents happen, and then he meets someone who can help uncover who he really is.

By turns cocky, paranoid, sardonic and distraught, Rockwell is always convincing, and Clint Mansell’s atmospheric score adds to the mood of combined melancholy and dread. Shot on sound stages at England’s Shepperton Studios, Moon also made me think of those nutjobs who insist the moon landings were faked. Fittingly, nothing in Moon is quite what it seems.