Moon (dir: Duncan Jones)

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is on the verge of unraveling. Counting down the days until his three-year contract as the lone operator of a moonbase operation mining the new moon rock wonder fuel that has solved Earth’s energy, with only a computerized robot named Gertie (voiced by Kevin Spacey in a dispassionate HAL-9000 tone with just a hint of human concern) for company and pre-recorded messages keeping a tenuous connection to home, he’s getting ragged around the edges. But when he wakes up in the infirmary after a bad crash, he’s suddenly much more focused, alert, healthy. And soon he’s talking to himself, and his other self – physical double, supernatural doppelganger or desperate vision of a man slowly going mad with isolation, we’re not quite sure – is answering.

Sam Rockwell is not himself today

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More SIFF coverage at the Seattle Weekly. Next week, Seattle’s very own homegrown zombie movie ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction plays the festival. I profile the film and the filmmakers for the Seattle Weekly in “Axis of the Undead.” (My review of the film runs next week)

Also recently run: capsule reviews of Lee Yoon-ki’s My Dear Enemy and This Charming Girl, Yim Phil-Sung’s South Korean horror twist on Hansel and Gretel and Duncan Jones’ Moon.

Plus: excerpts from my interview with Kathryn Bigelow.