Moon - full movie

Moon is an excellent 2009 science fiction mystery and psychological-existential drama, directed by the English filmmaker Duncan Jones in his feature film debut, who went on to direct the science fiction action thriller Source Code (2011), the action fantasy Warcraft (2016) and the neo noir science fiction movie Mute (2018). Jones is also known as  Zowie Bowie, because he's the son of the late pop star David Bowie.

The intelligent, unpredictable and compelling screenplay of Moon was written by director Duncan Jones in collaboration with the English screenwriter Nathan Parker.

The story is set on the far side of the moon, where the lonely American astronaut Sam Bell single-handedly mans a commercial space station of the company Lunar Industries on Earth. With the assistance of his talking computer GERTY, Sam regulates the industrial extraction of Helium-3 from the lunar surface and launches cannisters containing the Helium-3 to Earth as a valuable energy source for the home planet. Sam's three-year shift on the moon is coming to an end, but while he's impatiently looking forward to his reunion with his wife and daughter on Earth, he gradually discovers that something is wrong on the moon...

The complex and versatile role of astronaut Sam is brilliantly played by the American actor Sam Rockwell, who carries the entire movie because there are hardly any other actors on screen. It earned him a well-deserved BAFTA Award. 

Duncan Jones also won a BAFTA Award -in the category Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer- for writing and directing Moon. No surprise there either, because Moon is one of the best debuts we've ever seen. 

To watch the full movie, click the link "Watch on Odnoklassniki" in the video screen below, then click the play button, and in the lower right corner on the settings button and "Quality" to select 720p or 1080p for higher quality.

 

Genre: science fiction / mystery / psychological drama

Shocking beauty

Under the Skin  by Jonathan Glazer     ★★★★½

Mesmerized. That's how I felt, last summer, when I first watched Under the Skin: a strange, highly original and visually stunning 2013 science fiction mystery, directed by the versatile English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer (known for his 2000 crime thriller Sexy Beast and his 2004 family drama Birth). 

From the onset of Under the Skin, starting with the galactic opening shots which suggest that extraterrestrial forces arrive on Earth, I got the feeling that I was witnessing something very special. Something of a dark, fragile depth, rarely seen in an industry that's preoccupied with box-office returns.

Mysterious and seductive

Based on the 2000 novel of the same name by the Dutch writer Michel Faber, the intruiging screenplay of Under the Skin was co-written by Walter Campbell and director Jonathan Glazer.

The film follows a mysterious and nameless woman (played with glacial superiority by the talented American actress Scarlett Johansson), while she drives in a van through Scotland and lures solitary men into a trap, charming them while hiding her real intentions and maintaining her apparently dispassionate, ice-cold composure; colder than a femme fatale in a cryogenic freezer. 

Scarlett Johansson as the strange woman.

An equally mysterious motorcyclist helps the woman to conceal the evidence of her secretive deeds. What is this methodical duo up to? What is that strange black goo in which their victims end up? Does it extract an energy source or life force? And how does the strange seductress react when she notices essential things around her that make humans human, such as humor, compassion, self-sacrifice, musicality, hunger, fear, lust or love? Is she starting to feel something...?

Experimental

Glazer alternates quasi documentary shots of day-to-day life on the bleak streets of the Scottish city Glasgow with poetic and often hauntingly beautiful images. One of the most lyrical moments is a dissolve between the shot of Scarlett Johansson as the sleeping mystery woman and the shot of a spruce forest that's swaying in the wind. 

The experimental images in Under the Skin -such as the fascinating shots of the dark room with its black, liquid and reflective floor- come very close to museal video art and remind me of the visual magic in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant 1968 science fiction mystery classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the compelling soundscapes in Under the Skin (composed by Mica Levi aka Micachu), which enhance the ominous atmosphere that is sustained all the way to the film's tragic ending, are reminiscent of György Ligeti's eerie music in Kubrick's terrific 1980 horror thriller The Shining.

 

Some scenes in Under the Skin, f.e. certain scenes with actress Johansson as the seductress in her van, were shot with a hidden camera. The men who are invited into the van were often unsuspecting passers-by. And it was only after these scenes were already shot, that these men got told they were taking part in a movie. That contributed to their spontaneous, naturalistic interactions while they were secretely filmed. And Johansson herself -with that unique, 'alien', erotic look of hers- is perfectly cast as the enigmatic woman. Through her eyes, we notice (from a new, childlike perspective) the touching stupidity, vulnerablity, ugliness and beauty of mankind (and our individual selves), with wonder and compassion.

What a relief, also, that Glazer had the courage to explain nothing, and leave it to our own imaginations to explore the meaning of what's hidden under the skin of this equally sensitive and disturbing film. 

It's hard to find a more striking example of cinema as genuine art. Both cruel and sad, chilling and tender, Under the Skin is a masterpiece of rare, shocking beauty.

Joeri Naanai

Under the Skin - UK/USA/Switzerland - 2013.

Cast: Scarlett Johansson.

Genre: science fiction / thriller / existential drama

Human-all-too-human?

Ex Machina  by Alex Garland     ★★★★

Caleb (played by Domhnall Gleeson) is an intelligent guy. He works as a software programmer for Blue Book: the world's most popular Internet search engine. One day, Caleb wins a staff lottery. His prize is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet with Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac): the brilliant and wealthy CEO of the Google-like company, who designed his Blue Book-search engine when he was only 13. 

Arriving by helicopter on Nathan's secluded and vast estate, Caleb is invited inside Nathan's villa to see his hidden high-security laboratory, where the brainiac has completed a new, top secret invention. That invention is called Ava (played by Alicia Vikander): a womanlike robot with an advanced form of artificial intelligence. Ava's 'brain' is designed by Nathan on the basis of the essential cognitive, emotional and psychological workings of the human mind, which Nathan figured out by analyzing the archived search queries of the billions of users of his own worldwide Blue Book-search engine. According to Nathan, the database of his search engine isn't only a directory of what people think and feel, but also a blue print (or Blue Book) of how we think and feel. Therefore, Ava is not only able to 'think' and talk like a human, but also to smile, make jokes and flirt.

Caleb arrives in Nathan's abode.

At the request of Nathan, Caleb is willing to submit Ava for a week to the so-called Turing test: an experiment named after the British computer pioneer Alan Turing who invented it in 1949 and called it the imitation game. The Turing test is meant to determine whether a computing automaton, like Ava, is really (self-)conscious and can actually think and feel as a human, or whether she's only simulating these human qualities. Soon, however, Caleb begins to suspect that Nathan is hiding something. There's more to this. But what...?

Alicia Vikander as Ava (left) and Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb.

A Frankenstein's monster?

Ex Machina (2015) is a new, excellent sciencefiction mystery thriller, that makes us think twice about the implications of artificial intelligence. First time director Alex Garland, who's bestselling novel The Beach was brought to the screen in 2000 and who went on to write the screenplays of the sci-fi movies 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007) and Never Let Me Go (2010), wrote the screenplay of Ex Machina himself with a burning issue in mind. Earlier this year, scientist Stephen Hawking and billionaire engineer Elon Musk warned the public that the development of artificial intelligence does not only entail promising advantages, but also potential dangers. Intelligent robots would increase unemployment and could, in time, even escape man's control completely, like a Frankenstein's monster. In Ex Machina, Nathan acknowledges to Caleb that, some day, artificial intelligence will be far superior to human intelligence: "One day the AI's are gonna look back at us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa."

Oscar Isaac as Nathan (left) and Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb.

The risks of artificial intelligence have already been highlighted in brilliant sci-fi classics, such as:

- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, which features the legendary rogue computer HAL 9000; 

- Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, in which a crew member of the space ship Nostromo turns out to be an android robot with a hidden agenda;

- Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott, in which the title character (played by Harrison Ford) hunts down rebel android replicants; 

- and The Terminator (1984) by James Cameron, in which man and machine fight each other to the death. 

The sci-fi movies A.I. (2001) by Steven Spielberg and her (2013) by Spike Jonze feel less fatalistic, and appeal to our sympathy, or at least empathy, with the human-all-too-human ways in which intelligent machines could possibly experience themselves and their interaction with humans.

Labyrinth

Unlike The Terminator, Ex Machina is not an action movie. Nor a horror movie like Alien. Neither an epic space trip like 2001: A Space Odyssey or a dystopian neo-noir detective story like Blade Runner. And certainly not an adventurous fairy tale like A.I. or a poetic rom-com drama like her. 

Still, as a suspenseful cerebral mystery drama, Garland's remarkable directorial debut recalls certain notable narrative and visual aspects of the aforementioned sc-fi movies. The often soft lighting in Ex Machina reminded me of the dreamy pastel colors in her. And during strange power cuts in Nathan's villa, the red emergency light in his lab recalls the red lighting of the iconic sequence in which the rogue HAL-computer is disabled in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the same way HAL and also the replicants in Blade Runner have a will of their own, Ava seems to resist the authoritarian way in which she's treated by Nathan. It's as if she's saying: I'm not an object. And although in a strict material sense, Ava, evidently, is an object, and a man-made one for that, designed to serve humans, Garland leaves it up to the viewer to decide what, or who, Ava ultimately is. In doing so, Garland asks the viewer the most pertinent question in Ex Machina: how would you deal with Ava? Would you treat her as a woman or as a mere machine? Would you care for 'her' feelings or treat 'it' like nothing more than you would a toaster...? The existential questions and 'emotions' of Ava are reminiscent of the ones the machines ponder in A.I., Blade Runner and her. And the way the male protagonist in her (played by Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with a female computer program, is not unlike the way Caleb seems to succumb to Ava's charms. But what does Ava want? Is she honest? Or is she hiding her true intentions, like the secretive android robot in Alien...?

In short: following in the footsteps of some of the most influential, genre-defining sci-fi movies, Garland manages to translate his own vision of the complex dimensions of human interaction with intelligent robotics to the big screen in a way that is often as entertaining, compelling and profound as the sci-fi trailblazers of Kubrick, Scott, Cameron, Spielberg and Jonze.

Garland does so by luring the viewer into a labyrinth of deception and doubt. Is Nathan playing God? Is Ava nothing more than a 'parrot' desguised as a woman, simply reproducing what her software allows and can manage? Or is she really capable of creative thoughts and heartfelt emotions? How will Caleb react to the unexpected course of the experiment? And who is actually manipulating whom...?

Alicia Vikander as Ava.

Spectacular

Ex Machina looks great, by virtue of the clean cinematography, the atmospheric lighting and the clever set design. The story is almost exclusively set in Nathan's villa and lab. His modernist living quarters perfectly fit Nathan's hipster image of a trendy, innovative IT billionaire à la Steve Jobs. But the claustrophobic lab, where Ava 'lives', feels appropriately sinister.

Ava herself -the shining star of Ex Machina- looks nothing less than spectacular, thanks to great special effects that give her both a human and mechanical appearance, illustrating her ambiguous nature. She reminds me somewhat of the mysterious, ambivalent 'women' Scarlett Johansson 'inhabits' in her and in the brilliant sci-fi mystery Under the Skin (2013) by Jonathan Glazer (read our review); also nonhuman creatures who, like Ava, are curious to find out what makes humans human.

Besides the three main characters of Ex Machina (Caleb, Nathan an Ava), there's also the smaller part of Kyoko: an enigmatic Asian housemaid (played by the Japanese actress Sonoya Mizuno), who works in Nathan's villa as his personal assistant (in all ways imaginable...). And that's it: apart from some extra's at the beginning and end of the film, the cast of Ex Machina essentialy consists of only four actors. Yet, this turns out to be enough and never boring.

Oscar Isaac was the right choice for the role of the secretive and slippery genius Nathan. Domhnall Gleeson looks and acts appropriately nerdy for a young, predictable and thus manipulable programmer, but he excudes also a degree of inner strenght, which makes the Irish actor a good fit for the role of Caleb, who is a nerd but not a pushover. Sonoya Mizuno plays her part of the tacit maid Kyoko with bone-dry perfection. And Alicia Vikander is brilliant as the fascinating robot Ava, who sometimes looks more sensual than a real woman. You believe that it's a machine, but you also feel for her as if she's a real flesh and blood woman.

Intelligent

Garland's screenplay builds its suspense slowly. But meanwhile, there's room for some subtle comedy, e.g. in the hilarious little scene where Nathan and Kyoko engage in a funny synchronized disco dance to the funky 1983 R&B song Get Down Saturday Night by Oliver Cheatham. The rest of the soundtrack consists largely of simple, organic synthesizer music that feels threatening in the right places, without distracting from what's happening on screen.

The intelligent screenplay is anything but artificial (pun intended), which contributes to the credibility of the story. Except in a crucial scene during the surprising finale, where Nathan behaves less cautious than one would expect from a visionary genius. Ex Machina could also have benefited from some more suspense. 

Overall, this is one of the best directorial debuts in the history of cinema.

Joeri Naanai

Ex Machina - UK - 2015.

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno.

Genre: science fiction / thriller / mystery / psychological drama