Films we rate: Moon

The PC Format crew love classic sci-fi cinema. We lap up films like 2001, Alien, Blade Runner and Aliens. David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, has made a film called Moon, and it should be a celluloid haven for PC Format's staff. But was it? I went to see it on Friday, and it seems particularly apt to be posting my review today, as it's the 40th anniversary as the Apollo moon landings. Just as Neil Armstrong conquered a strange new world, I'm entering the uncharted territory of film reviews.

Moon's premise is delightfully strange: alone on our natural satellite, mining Helium-3, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) comes across his own double. Who is this mysterious stranger? Why do they both have the same memories? And does their robot compatriot, Gerty (Kevin Spacey), have a hidden agenda?

To say more would be to give the game away, but it's a promising debut from a young director. The attention to detail is astonishing: it feels like a film that could have been made at any point in the past 40 years. The effects are nicely model-based, and the whole film is low-key and quiet. It's the kind of sci-fi flick people made before special effects meant every scene had to feature a giant robot. A film you'd find on VHS in a charity shop. And that's no bad thing.

Rockwell is astonishing as well. He's a likably scruffy actor, and one I've followed ever since the criminally-overlooked Lawn Dogs. There will inevitably be comparisons to his similarly dual performance as Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, and here he convincingly portrays two characters who are essentially the same but different. I just hope he got paid twice.

Inspite of this tour-de-force performance, there are quite a few things that simply don't add up about Moon's plot. I second-guessed a major part of the ending within about five minutes of the film starting, and the mid-section feels superfluous once you know what's going on. There's also a major typo on one of the displays, and that's the kind of thing that really irks me. Petty, I know, but in the future everything will have a built-in spell checker. Even kettles.

Moon is worth seeing for the period design and atmosphere alone, though. It has a terrific premise; it's just a shame that it doesn't mine its ideas a little more.