Movie Review - Moon

The film Moon is a fascinating movie which is widely acclaimed for a variety of reasons. For one, it was Duncan Jones’ first movie, and it was a huge success at Sundance the year it was released. It also achieved an incredible feat which was to produce quality sci-fi on an impressively small budget. This film was the talk of the town in the nerd-culture sphere in 2009, so I was quick to seek it out then. Upon re-watching it, I was struck by how sad and powerful some of Sam Rockwell’s scenes are. All in all, the movie completely holds up without question, apart from how the Kevin Spacey-bot forces us to ponder the ‘Me Too’ movement.

Moon is a story that is told with a very sparse cast. This probably contributed to its budget significantly. Sam Bell is a basic blue-collar worker. Sam Rockwell, the actor portraying the character, is a perfect version of a futuristic everyman. He is matter-of-fact and laid back in his attitude and habits.

GERTY is the name for the artificial intelligence robot who maintains the base along with Sam. This character unfolds as one of the more interesting inversions of audience expectations. It is impossible to ignore the comparison to the Kubrick classic, 2001, wherein HAL 9000 turns on his human counterparts. GERTY is surprisingly helpful and builds trust in the audience early. Viewers may find themselves constantly questioning GERTY’s loyalty.

Tess Bell is Sam’s wife on Earth. She is only ever seen in video-chat sessions. She and Sam have a young daughter who is in the video calls as well. Tess is supportive and loving and appreciative, and she clearly misses Sam up on the moon.

There is another character who is also played by Sam Rockwell. This character somehow looks just like Sam in every way, which causes some confusion and much plot development. This person comes into the story injured and confused and seems to be a clone of Sam, which causes both to start questioning everything.

Moon begins with a typical boring day for Sam. He drives a large lunar vehicle and farms the resources, which has become a mundane grind. His job is to maintain this lunar mining facility for a multi-year period which is two weeks from completion.

Sam’s normal activities are interrupted when he discovers a signal of a living person out in the fields of the mining operation. He goes out to discover it is an injured man who is brought back to the base. There he realized this man is actually a clone of himself.

This discovery causes him to question everything. The clone recuperates and the two fluctuate between friendship and animosity as they attempt to figure out a way forward. All through this drama is GERTY the AI who may or may not be trustworthy.

Sam often talks to himself, which makes his motivations clear. From the outset of act one, all he wants is to finish this job and get home to his family. He encounters the main conflict at the end of act one, when he first finds his clone and the hook is set.

Act two revolves around the conflict between the two Sams. As a viewer, one has to assume that they will kill each other somehow. This act ends when it is clear there is no real hope for Sam to satisfy his hopes of returning to his family by any normal method.

Act three is where everyone finally starts working together towards the common goal of somehow defeating the faceless company that put them in this position. Act three is full of spoilers about how the movie ends. It is enough to say that there is teamwork, a climax, and finally closure, which is satisfying, but also sad.

The film is overwhelmingly white and black in its colour palette. The moon has no atmosphere which means even the daylight seems like nighttime. There is a fundamental eeriness to the lunar environment. Duncan Jones also makes an effort to increase the solitude by showing over and over how vacant and empty everything is.
Moon is certainly labelled as a sci-fi film. It also could be accurately called a horror or thriller. The notion of encountering your own exact duplicate is a certain psychological horror cliché.

This film remains fantastically impactful, although I really don’t think I need to see it again. It shows the triumph of the human spirit in opposition to absolute existential tragedy. This is impressive, but wow is it sad. In the days when this movie was released, I feel it was well understood that sci-fi could be much better than it was but for the money limitations. Is all sci-fi condemned to being either super low budget TV or mega-budget Transformers 12? Duncan Jones rose to the challenge, but he didn’t write a space-adventure, he wrote a space-psycho-thriller.

Movie Review - District 9

Wikus Van De Merwe is our main character who occupies the vast majority of the scenes. He is a good-natured straight-laced kind of person who seems to thrive in a office management position. He has been working with a government branch in charge of outreach to the alien refugees. The nation has decided to relocate them to a new camp outside of the city, and Wikus is given the task of chief administrator of this action.

Sandra Van De Merwe, a beautiful young woman who seems happily married to Wikus. Her father is the head of some unnamed gigantic influential corporation. She seems to like Wikus very much and would like to live a happy normal life.

Wikus’s Father in-law is a powerful intimidating businessman. He seems to have great political influence as well. He is responsible for getting Wikus this new important position, which gives him great power over Wikus. He seems to have a low opinion of his son-in-law and may be actively trying to sabotage him. He is very protective of his daughter but does not divulge anything to her about what he does for a living.

Christopher the Prawn is mysterious. After seeing several scenes of the aliens behaving animalistic, we finally see one who has the ability to reason and speak with subtitles. His backstory is a mystery, but he seems to be very intelligent and is working towards a solution to the refugee crisis as a whole. He is collecting pieces of alien technology to build something that is not immediately understood. He is able to put his prejudice aside and trust Wikus when the crisis begins.

Christopher the Prawn’s Son is a curious and helpful little boy. He exhibits many of the traditional cuteness signifiers despite being largely cockroach-like in form. His very existence helps the viewer identify and humanize the weird and off-putting aliens. He helps to clarify the main Prawn’s motivations and priorities.

The movie begins as a documentary style fiction about an alien invasion turned refugee crisis. As the viewer is brought up to speed quickly, we meet our main characters from a camera’s point of view as if watching a reality T.V. program. The protagonist is a clear example of the Hollywood everyman who has worked hard to earn a decent job and a good wife. He is motivated to impress everyone in his life to do a great job with this new opportunity he is offered. The job is to lead the effort to relocate a ghetto of alien refugees, which is sure to be a P.R. nightmare to say the least. Wikus is eager to please, nonetheless.

Wikus’s task goes off the rails on the first day as his nerdy curiosity leads him to be exposed to something exotic and dangerous. This entangles our main character in a violent struggle between forces. Wikus has to rethink his old priorities and allegiances to move forward and act heroically. The movie is ten years old and it could have been made yesterday.

Broadly, the movie follows a traditional heroes’ journey. Wikus has a normal life and is exposed to something exotic which demands he undertake a task. He tries to deny the call to action, but it is inevitable, and he can never return home again. By the end of the movie he is a changed person and he winds up back where the whole mess began but his perspective is completely different. He sacrifices his own wellbeing to save someone else.

District 9 is unique among action sci-fi movies in that it takes place largely in broad daylight. The movie feels profoundly realistic due to its similarity to television news and reality programing. I recall the film was widely hailed for being innovative in several ways, and above all shockingly inexpensive. Before this film, it seems special effects artists were intimidated by the daylight and tended to use darkness to increase the drama but also the believability of their effects.

This film has a few scenes in darkened rooms, but they are mostly interiors during the daytime. This means there are loads of little holes where light leaks in, as well as intentional windows and shades. Having such dark interiors during the obvious daylight adds realism to the idea of poverty. The lack of light is due to the lack of electricity.

To enhance the feeling of actual documentaries, the film uses a great deal of first-person shots from the point of view of the camera itself. This is a clear reference to news footage primarily. It also carries an interesting connection to youtube.com and the era of smartphones everywhere, even though it predates the widespread adoption. “Shakey-Cam” had still been around for a good while before District 9, so it was also a ‘nod’ to other films like Saving Private Ryan and similarly brutal war movies. The entire first act unfolds as if shot from a single camera following the main character. He speaks directly to the camera as well as the camera operator as he goes through his tasks, which adds a strange immersion to the viewer. All of his super-optimistic actions are interspliced with documentary-style interviews clearly conducted after some ‘event’ that has yet to occur. Intercutting between the stable shots of interview subjects and the unstable shots of our main character adds a large amount of tension and anticipation.

The audio similarly follows the feeling of a reality-tv performance. Characters address the camera directly, and other action happens overtop of the primary action. Crashes happen offscreen and the camera pans over quickly to see what made the sound.

I have seen this movie one time before, and it was in 2009, the year the movie came out. I remember how it was highly praised by several tastemakers for its outside approach to action/sci-fi on a truly achievable budget. It also connected reality with sci-fi in a way never before seen, and it took place in a somewhat obscure location. It was certainly a movie of interest in 2009, so I was curious to see how it had aged.

My first take is that District 9 is extremely violent in a disturbingly realistic way. I think much of the sci-fi enthusiasts of the world who praise this film might be forgetting about the middle portion. The final sequence involves literal lightning weapons and a robot exoskeleton in an elaborate gunfight, so one could be forgiven for not remembering how act two is a literal nightmare. The man has his fingernails fall out.

Overall, the movie made me feel very uncomfortable in a variety of ways. There is a great deal of gore and blood and exploding people, but I think the most horrifying scene is the three-minute surprise party for Wikus.

This scene highlights how I feel about District 9. It features some of the most amazingly effective action sequences of the last 30 years, possibly further. It also has some anxiety-inducing nightmare-fuel that cannot be unseen. I think it makes an interesting gesture towards meaningful social commentary, but I see no solutions or redemptions. Wikus is an everyman who gets caught up in something awful and there is no way back. He was a good guy doing a thankless job and everyone in his life abandons him when things go bad. He acts heroically to help the aliens, but his story is ultimately unsatisfying. I suppose he began treating the aliens with a dismissive, inhuman manner, but he was never a malicious sadist about it. He probably actually thought they would be better off at the new location.

Movie Review - Citizen Kane

Allegedly the greatest movie of all time, Citizen Kane remains impactful despite its prominence in satirical popular culture. The film has a half dozen leading characters, but the plot is heavily focused on Kane himself, the tragic man who has everything but feels like he is missing something and is doomed to die unfulfilled.

The story unfolds after the death of the titular character. A newsreel is being made to help the public understand the odd tycoon’s life and the meaning of his final words. One investigator is sent to interview the people closest to the man, and it is through these conversations that Kane’s life story is told.

The reporter interviews his college friend Jedediah, his business partner Bernstein, and reads the memoires of Thatcher, Kane’s first trust fund manager. Many stories are recounted, and the character of the man is further understood, but the investigator Thompson never finds the truth behind Kane’s final words.

Charles Foster Kane is played by the famous Orson Welles. Welles also directed the film, and it is hard to ignore the dominance of his character. I was personally mesmerized by the young Welles, having recently seen the old Welles in a series of out-takes from his late-life commercial acting in which he is noticeably drunk. Orson Welles is a strange cross-generational influencer much like Kane himself. He was famously involved with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast which demonstrated the power of mass media. Kane gets involved in the newspaper business and reinvigorates the medium with his ideas. Kane winds up dead and alone in a giant mansion. Welles has to sell fish sticks to pay rent.

I have trouble seeing Kane or Welles as a tragic figure. Perhaps Kane was sad and nostalgic at the end, but he did lead a full life. It was amusing to think a political career might be completely ended when a love affair was exposed. Also, maybe Kane’s second wife should have become a Jazz or Folk singer instead of opera. I think the modern lesson of this movie is that Kane shouldn’t have given up so easily. Maybe his problem wasn’t a lack of love in his upbringing, but rather a core sense of shame over having not earned his wealth. He reinvents the newspaper business and amasses great wealth, but maybe it was all motivated by a need to justify his fortune. I should hope that nowadays a Kane-type figure would invest in some life-coaches and therapists that could offer some genuine perspective.

In order to appreciate the film, you have to re-adjust your perspective and try to see it as someone in the ‘40s might. From a technical standpoint, the brilliance is undeniable. This is an age when most movies looked as if they were stage plays. Citizen Kane has deliberately meaningful foreground and background elements with thoughtful lighting choices and clever scene changes. Sound effects are well arranged. If the viewer is familiar with bad audio and video effects, Citizen Kane stands as a profound success.

Having not seen this movie until now, I cannot help but be consumed by all the references and jokes made about Citizen Kane. I would wager that over half of the scenes have been parodied directly on The Simpsons. Combine this with the notion that it is the “greatest movie of all time”, it is difficult to take the film at face value without over-analyzing every moment. It stands as a historical curiosity for me. It is certainly interesting enough to recommend today, but only as a museum artifact.

Stencils and Banksy

In 2005, one of the most well-shared images on the internet was the various pictures of the work done by street artist Banksy in the UK. He made popular the style of using stencils to create simple three-colour images which had nearly photorealistic qualities. The growing availability of computers had made it easy to create a high-quality planar portrait of a face, and have that be recognizable when reproduced on concrete.

This methodology turns the practice of graffiti on its head. In the years since TAKI and Cornbread, store owners and police officers had become much more clever when it comes to preventing graffiti on their property. In order to tag something, your approach needed to be very simplistic to avoid getting caught. Vast colourful murals were relegated to trainyards and abandoned buildings. Using a stencil enables the artist to lay down a highly recognizable image in mere minutes.

Banksy's work has always struck me as rather sophomoric. It reeks of the ignorant cleverness seen only in 17 year olds. Despite its puerile nature, I do enjoy the provocative nature of his stencils. Maybe society needs to go back to middle-school and brush up on the fundamentals? Maybe Banksy is deliberately speaking to society on a grade-6 reading level.

Aside from the social commentary and mysterious intrigue which follows Banksy, it is interesting to see how stencil-art graffiti affects type. A well-made stencil can reproduce the same work hundreds of times, although it is limited to a specific size. In order to push the impact of the stencil medium, many artists elect to use stencil-based typefaces. In the past century, stencil type has been often associated with military supply and the brutal simplicity with which they name things. Military stencils are often more impactful when arranged at an angle. Using type such as this can have a tremendous Orwellian slap in the face impact on the viewer. Nothing says fear and disarray like a stencil-painted text saying "quarantine", "fallout shelter", or "food rations". The repetitive sameness of it all is reminiscent of Warhol.

Jean Michel Basquiat & the Art world

Writing your name on public property does not make you an artist. The act of tagging has many significant effects on society, but the impact is 100% dependent on the location.

The rise of bubble lettering and evolution of street art meant inevitably graffiti tags would migrate into the realm of fine art. Many creative types rose up making a name in this new urban folk-art style, but few became as well-known as Jean Michel Basquiat.

He began like many others in the early ‘70s spreading his tag across New York City. His personal tag was SAMO, a slang version of the phrase “same old __”. SAMO began as a shared effort between Basquiat and a friend, Al Diaz, while in high school. The tag was also part of a comic book style publication the pair was working on.

Unlike TAKI 183 and others, the pair's SAMO tag quickly evolved beyond simply repeating the moniker. The tag was often paired with provocative anti-consumerist phrases.

SAMO was always a sophomoric effort, as described by Basquiat and Diaz. The pair continued posting edgy phrases around lower Manhattan until the late '70s. Continued devotion to the bohemian lifestyle in NYC meant the pair were soon connected with other culture creators in the music and art world. Basquiat and Diaz had a falling out in 1980, and Jean-Michel held a melodramatic party announcing the "death of SAMO".

Basquiat transitioned easily to the art world, adapting his style to the canvas instead of the public wall. His work evolved past straightforward statements to incorporate more and more drawings. He had a tendency to focus on craniums and other rough abstractions of medial diagrams. He continued to use type in a less sensical way. The work has a clear connection to Dadaism and futurist nonsense of the 1920s. It could be said that his work, and others like him, were now making art that was a commentary derived from graffiti. The urban folk-art style could only exist in a world covered in graffiti, such as New York City in the 1970s.

Bubble Letters

Phase2 began his career in the late 1970s as one of many juvenile delinquents in NYC.  The emerging hip-hop culture was becoming more established as a true artistic movement. Graffiti tags evolved beyond simply writing one’s handle. The letters themselves became provocative and esoteric at the same time. Legibility took a backseat to enticing curves and shocking colors. This new technique became known as 'Wild Style'.

Subsequently the trend of bubble letters took hold in a big way. Also known as 'softies', Phase 2 helped usher in a trend of increasing obfuscation in letterforms. The style has roots in psychedelic poster art from the late '60s. Viewers had to be somewhat hip and in-the-know to decipher the words.

Bubble letters remain popular today. The technique has been repeated so much over the past decades that their appearance is commonplace around the world. Artists have to become increasingly creative to rise above the herd.

The basic approach is to make the letters so thick and stretched out that they crash together creating random organic shapes. Similar techniques are used by logo designers when they make text-based logotypes.

Crashing letters creates a sense of motion, action, and character. The graffiti tags in bubble letters may not say anything to the casual observer, but they have a clear emotion to convey nonetheless. Colour takes a more prominent role, and the corners of letters can have a wide variety ranging from soft to sharp.

The 'softies' have remained a touchstone for hip-hop culture. In the '70s they were cutting edge, and by the '90s, they had become retro. Modern advancements of the style have re-energized the bubble letter style, and now it is solidified as an element of typography. Softies speak to an anti-establishment hip-hop mentality before they are even read by a viewer.