Best Movies of 2009 sort of

My proviso is that there are several 2009 domestic movies I would still like to see and don’t get me started about how hard it is to find current foreign films.

Best Movies of the Year: The Hurt Locker and Bright Star (tie)

The Hurt Locker (directed by Kathryn Bigelow) -- If you are looking for a film about the Iraq War or Middle East issues, this is not that film. This is a movie about the psychology of soldiers under stress, focusing on three men in a bomb disposal unit. The amount of tension the story builds is remarkable. It’s a masterful character study that takes its time, peeling back one layer at a time.

Bright Star (directed by Jane Campion) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review). Pictured are Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne and Ben Wishaw as John Keats.

Also recommended: A Serious Man (directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen), Fantastic Mr. Fox (directed by Wes Anderson), Up in the Air (directed by Jason Reitman).

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie of the Year: Moon

Moon (directed by Duncan Jones) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review). Pictured is Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell.

Recommended with reservations:
Star Trek (directed by J.J. Abrams) -- Enjoyable if you can ignore the plot problems.
District 9 (directed by Neill Blomkamp) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review).
Avatar (directed by James Cameron) -- See it for its visuals. (A brief SF Strangelove review).

All four of these supposedly forward-looking science fiction films seem dated: Moon’s concern with cloning, Star Trek’s basis in 1960s television, District 9’s rewrite of Alien Nation (1988), and Avatar’s rewrite of Tarzan (1912).

Moon

Moon (Sony Pictures Classics)
Director: Duncan Jones; writers: Duncan Jones (original story), Nathan Parker (screenplay).

There will be major spoilers.

Moon is claustrophobic, set almost entirely within small living quarters on the moon. Sam Rockwell does quite well as the lonely lunar mine operator (the character is also named Sam) who has committed to a three-year contract. He is accompanied, for much of the movie, only by a computer intelligence, Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey. The situation and the sets recall such films as Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) and Trumbull’s Silent Running (1972).

The movie turns on Sam unraveling how he has been deceived about his situation. The pace may be slow for some viewers, but I found it quite involving. As Sam reveals the multiple layers of deception, we get an unusually strong and multilayered character study of Sam. The central conceit of the story, that Sam doesn't know he is a clone, is a bit of a letdown, since the novelty of clones as a science fiction plot device wore off decades ago. Still, it gives Sam Rockwell an opportunity to play versions of the same character interacting with each other and he does wonderfully. The clones age quickly, making it easy for the audience to keep track of who is who.

The film successfully creates a sense of mystery about Sam’s situation. The visuals, both inside and outside the living quarters, while not extravagant, are quite convincing. Gerty, the computer, is oddly the most empathetic character, even while limited to a very simple range of smiley-face emotions it can display on its screen. By the end of the film Sam (and the audience) is hanging on Gerty’s every smiley-face or frowny-face reaction.

The audience is left with some rather important questions: Why is it better to have dozens of short-lived clones in storage for serial use instead of regular workers? Why should the mining company lie to the clones instead of being honest about the situation? Surely there are comparable lonely jobs on Earth that people perform without being deceived.

Moon is Jones' feature film directing debut, and it suggests a promising future.