moon movie review

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  • Common Sense Says
  • Parents Say 4 Reviews
  • Kids Say 1 Review

Common Sense Media Review

Tom Cassidy

Thought-provoking sci-fi has some violence, strong language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Moon is a superb psychological sci-fi drama with some emotionally big ideas and some strong language. Starring Sam Rockwell as Sam, a lone astronaut with just a computer (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company, the movie touches on themes that range from isolation and unethical…

Why Age 14+?

Frequent language used under stress, includes "f--k," "f--ing," "a--hole," "s--t

Intro montage has brief real-life footage of a distressed group of people. A cha

Two characters are seen kissing in bed -- one strips down to their underwear. Ch

Brief mention of "needing a drink."

Any Positive Content?

The movie presents a damning picture of corporate values and human greed. But it

Space base maintenance worker Sam takes his job seriously and loves his family.

Frequent language used under stress, includes "f--k," "f--ing," "a--hole," "s--t," "motherf----r," "goddammit," and "Jesus Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Intro montage has brief real-life footage of a distressed group of people. A character accidentally burns their hand with boiling water and crashes a vehicle, suffering a cut head. Two characters fight and one suffers a bloody nose. A character's body starts to shut down, including vomiting blood and losing a tooth.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two characters are seen kissing in bed -- one strips down to their underwear. Character shown nude from behind in shower scene.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

The movie presents a damning picture of corporate values and human greed. But it also shows how kindness, compassion, and teamwork can prevail in unlikely places.

Positive Role Models

Space base maintenance worker Sam takes his job seriously and loves his family. When a mysterious second character arrives, they are at first domineering but as they work with Sam to find out what's happening, they bond and become allies. The station's robot, GERTY, is a neutral presence that follows its programming, to both protect Sam and serve the sinister Lunar Industries corporation that runs the base. The corporation's dishonest treatment of Sam could be considered unethical.

Parents need to know that Moon is a superb psychological sci-fi drama with some emotionally big ideas and some strong language. Starring Sam Rockwell as Sam, a lone astronaut with just a computer (voiced by Kevin Spacey ) for company, the movie touches on themes that range from isolation and unethical corporate behavior to the very nature of existence and what it means to be human. Positive character traits include compassion, empathy, and teamwork. Sam uses bad language when under stress, including "f--k," "s--t," and "goddammit." The movie has some scenes of violence, with a fist fight that results in a bloody nose and some mild body horror elements as a character's body starts to decay, during which they vomit blood and lose a tooth. There is also a vehicle crash with mild bloody injury and a character accidentally burns their hand with boiling water. One brief scene between a couple sees a woman strip to her underwear. A man's naked bottom is shown in the shower. With its existential themes, families will have much to discuss when this thought-provoking movie is over. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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moon movie review

Parent and Kid Reviews

  • Parents say (4)
  • Kids say (1)

Based on 4 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In MOON, astronaut Sam's ( Sam Rockwell ) three-year solo space mission is coming to an end. But an arrival on the space base throws his world into disarray and reveals the truth about his very existence.

Is It Any Good?

A huge, mind-expanding existential exploration wrapped up in an exciting futuristic, unpredictable psychological drama steeped in mystery. In short, Moon is great sci-fi. The depth, vision, and scope debut director Duncan Jones achieves with a modest $5 million budget, a single set, and one lead actor is a true achievement. Visually, the movie recalls classic stark sci-fi stations from the likes of Alien , while the computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey ) is a clear nod to the iconic HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey . But the smart writing and economical production means this movie deserves its own place among the brightest stars in the genre.

Rockwell does almost all the heavy lifting on screen, playing complex roles and running a vast range of emotions. Not only is the movie awe-inspiring in its scope, the humanity hits hard, effortlessly skipping between heartbreaking, hopeful, and even humorous. By its closing credits the movie has presented a range of questions and posers that will provoke hours of thought and discussion.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Moon had to say about what it means to be human. What message do you think the movie was trying to tell? What do you think it means to be human?

Discuss the character of Sam. How did he demonstrate compassion , empathy , and teamwork ? Why are these important character strengths to have?

Discuss some of the strong language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

Talk about the movie's violence . What role did it play in the story? Does exposure to violent media desensitize kids to violence?

Discuss the role of Lunar Industries in the movie. Do you think corporations have ethical responsibilities or should they only be concerned with serving their shareholders?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : June 12, 2009
  • On DVD or streaming : January 12, 2010
  • Cast : Sam Rockwell , Kevin Spacey , Dominique McElligott
  • Director : Duncan Jones
  • Inclusion Information : Gay actors, Female actors
  • Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
  • Genre : Science Fiction
  • Topics : Space and Aliens
  • Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy , Teamwork
  • Run time : 97 minutes
  • MPAA rating : R
  • Last updated : January 6, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Moon

  • Jul 15, 2009
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moon movie review

Moon Review

Moon

17 Jul 2009

While J. J. Abrams’ Red Bull reboot of Star Trek has triumphantly pulled the Zimmer frame from a rusting franchise, the relaunch is pretty indicative of modern mainstream sci-fi — epic on the dazzle, easy on the brain cells. Given its pondersome heritage, Trek’s facelift as an action series is an invigorating way to go, but it does firm up the argument that the genre of Big Ideas is, nowadays, more about Huge Explosions.

Which is odd because, during the ’70s and early ’80s, American cinema was besotted with sci-fi, not as a rollercoaster ride, but as a vessel for exploring man’s place in the cosmic ink. Duncan Jones’ mesmerising debut is an affectionate throwback to the Blade Runners, Outlands and Dark Stars of the genre, not just in terms of the way it looks, but the way it feels and thinks. From the very moment we land on Moon, the future is sci-fi’s past. The year is 2024 but really, what with the chunky lunar bases, clinical interiors and spooky, mothering computer, its Casio watch is still firmly stuck on 2001. Endearingly lo-fi Tonka Toy lunar buggies bonk over the moon’s surface like it’s space circa 1999. The stranded space-hippy vibe screams Silent Running... And yet, just when you think you’ve seen it all before, Moon fuses a jumble of familiar elements and magics up something original.

The opening act follows all the beats of a castaway movie as we’re eased into the moon boots of Sam Bell, plodding solo around his lunar base, sharing tediously functional conversations with a Kevin Spacey-voiced computer, watching video messages from the wife and generally aching to get the hell out of there. Sedate camerawork and Clint Mansell’s spectral piano score compound the sense of unearthly isolation, but what makes it all so captivating are the lived-in details that ground his solitary confinement — the furry dice in the moon rover, the crumpled Post-it notes, the vac-packed baked beans he slobbily sucks straight out of the bag...

There’s also, however, a softly humming ominous ambience that’s always threatening a lurch into space oddity and when it hits, with the baffling arrival of Bell’s surly doppelgänger, the film warps genres — from character study to twisty-turny existential mystery, and it’s just too smart to spoil. Less a whodunnit, more a whothehellami, while the ingenious script keeps you guessing, a terrific turn from Sam Rockwell keeps you caring. It’s a deeply engaging one-man show and, crucially, puts a human face on some seriously hefty themes (memory, alienation, identity). When he finally cries, “I just want to go home,” hearts will break.

Shot in 33 days and working miracles with a $5 million budget, it’s a Sundance movie in outer space and a relief it escaped the studio black hole. Moon asks proper big, stimulating questions about what it means to be human, without being cold, aloof, poncy or even remotely boring. It also looks, in its own wonderfully Airfixy way, fantastic. If you like brainfood served with your eye candy, take the trip.

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Screen Rant

Moon review.

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Sam Rockwell in Moon (review)

Screen Rant reviews Moon

Moon is the debut feature film by writer/director Duncan Jones. The film stars Sam Rockwell, the voice of Kevin Spacey and... actually just those two, really. The film is set on the lunar base Selene in a future where Helium 3, a gas mined from the moon's surface, holds the key to reversing Earth's energy crisis.

Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the one-man team assigned to Selene on a three-year contract. Bell's primary job is waiting around days on end for one of the corporation's three automated lunar harvesters to register a full Helium 3 load, which he then extracts and jettisons to Earth on a small space transport.

Moon opens as Bell is coming to the end of his three-year term. He's bored, isolated, lonely and desperately aching to be reunited with his wife and the daughter he never met back on Earth. Bell's only "friend" on the station is GERTY (voice of Spacey), an artificial intelligence system charged with watching over Sam and keeping him pacified and focused on his job.

As his time on the station comes to a close, Sam starts feeling strange. He starts seeing things, feeling odd pangs of emotion, and even some physical pain. One day, while out on a routine Helium 3 extraction, Sam suffers a terrible accident that prompts the corporation to initiate a horrifying contingency plan, all but forgetting about Sam even as his life hangs in the balance.

I'll stop there. I've been debating for some time about how much of the plot of Moon I should reveal. In this case, it's hard to judge where the line between spoilers and non-spoilers falls. I will say this: What you think is going to be Moon 's eleventh-hour plot twist is actually a first-half-hour plot twist. Conventions that other sci-fi films try to use as a climatic gimmick, Moon uses as a jumping-off point. Already that catapults the film far ahead of other sci-fi movies, landing it in a realm of originality all its own. And, to its credit, Moon does a pretty good job building on that fresh terrain.

The real standout in this film is Sam Rockwell. Those familiar with some of Rockwell's back catalog ( Confessions of a Dangerous Mind , Matchstick Men , Choke ) know what a dangerously underrated actor he is. In Moon , Rockwell is (essentially) a one-man show: He gets up on screen and for 97 minutes takes his character through every conceivable emotion you could ever be asked to portray at an acting workshop. And not only is the performance funny, sad, freaky, thought-provoking and totally believable, it's also very engaging. It's a hard thing for one actor to hold an audience's interest for a whole movie (Tom Hanks got an Oscar nom for it), yet every time I thought I knew what Sam Bell was going to do next, I was surprised. A great performance.

Moon GERTY

I also really enjoyed the "character" of GERTY. It's essentially Kevin Spacey's voice (which is somehow simultaneously soothing and slightly unnerving) and a robotic arm with a small monitor screen displaying an emoticon. And yet somehow, despite his monotone dialogue and programmed responses, GERTY nearly steals every scene he's in and is arguably the most "human" character in the film. Some people might be tempted to say, "Dude, it's HAL from 2001 ," but in the end, I think GERTY will win most viewers over.

With Moon , writer-director Duncan Jones (who is David Bowie's son, BTW) has definitely managed to achieve the nearly impossible: Breaking free of sci-fi conventions to create something new and unique, and yet oddly familiar. Like with GERTY, there were a couple of times during the movie I thought it was going to become a carbon-copy of this or that famous sci-fi film - but every time I started to feel that way, Jones managed to veer things just far enough off the beaten path to keep Moon feeling refreshingly interesting. Jones, I suspect, will become a very accomplished sci-fi director if he chooses to stay with the genre.

The only real criticism I have with this film is the story. The characters are well rendered, the plot never really gets lost in its own convolutions, and the major themes (even the implied ones) are very, very, interesting to think about. Moon is one of those movies you finish seeing and immediatly want to see again, knowing what you know now.

Tension is the real weak point of the story. Without giving too much away, lets just say that the nature of the plot makes it hard for the story to have any real sense of narrative or thematic tension. The ending of the film is primarily a thematic payoff, one that could be hard for some viewers to relate to on a personal or emotional level. Basically the film is like watching skilled philosophers (that would be Moon co-writers Jones and Nathan Parker) positing a philosophical point and calling that posited point a "climax." Sure, what's being posited may be interesting , but how many people are going to care ?

In the end, though Moon may fall short of stirring the heart, it sure does stir the intellect. And let's face it: Intellectual stimulation is pretty much what sci-fi fans are all about. Moon is a high point for the genre, and Douglas Jones and Sam Rockwell deserve a lot of the credit for taking it into orbit.

moon movie review

Duncan Jones presents Moon, a sci-fi mystery drama that follows Astronaut Sam Bell, who has spent the last three years working at a lunar mine in isolation and is coming up at the end of his shift. However, as Sam prepares to return home to his family and meet his daughter for the first time, he begins to experience vivid hallucinations of a younger version of himself and begins to experience hazardous events. Before Lunar Industries arrives to relieve him of duty, he must uncover the reason for his recent psychosis and free himself of his mental prison.

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In 'Moon,' Glimpses Of A Lonely Soul's Dark Night

Bob Mondello 2010

Bob Mondello

moon movie review

'Moon' Unit: Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a helium-mining contractor who gets a little squirrelly toward the end of a three-year solo assignment on the moon. Mark Tille/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

'Moon' Unit: Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a helium-mining contractor who gets a little squirrelly toward the end of a three-year solo assignment on the moon.

  • Director: Duncan Jones
  • Genre: Sci-fi fantasy
  • Running Time: 97 minutes

Rated R: For language With: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey

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moon movie review

Unforgiving Terrain: With a robot for a co-star and some solid special effects to frame him, Rockwell does his best to carry the movie. The story, unfortunately, proves an added burden. Mark Tille/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

Unforgiving Terrain: With a robot for a co-star and some solid special effects to frame him, Rockwell does his best to carry the movie. The story, unfortunately, proves an added burden.

Actor Sam Rockwell has played his share of villains, but in Moon he's a decidedly engaging presence. So engaging, in fact, that he may well convince audiences that Duncan Jones' film is what it means to be: a brainteaser for the thinking sci-fi crowd.

You can see why Jones might have decided there was a need to be filled. There haven't been a lot of films lately to offer a glimpse of a future that isn't alien-infested or populated by folks for whom photon-blasters are the score-settlers of choice. Danny Boyle's Sunshine, maybe, with its save-the-planet ethos and its overstatedly pretty art direction — but even that devolved into a battle with a monster.

The story in Moon, about an astronaut who starts deteriorating mentally as his three-year solo stint on a lunar mining site is nearing an end, is a throwback to an earlier breed of science fiction: the techno-skeptical, isolated-in-space psychodrama.

The form blossomed for a time after Stanley Kubrick demonstrated its possibilities in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only to be eclipsed a few years later when Star Wars ushered in a cowboys-in-space era.

Still, the psychodrama approach had adherents. Think Silent Running (1971), with Bruce Dern and his droids tending what's left of the earth's plant life in pressurized geodesic domes out near the rings of Saturn. Or Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Soviet original, not Steven Soderbergh's pallid Hollywood remake), with a distraught space-station crew experiencing hallucinatory episodes, and slowly realizing that they're being caused by the planet they're orbiting.

Moon is as cagey as its predecessors about doling out plot details in snippets. The film opens with an ad for Lunar Industries, a massive corporation that's mining the moon to extract Helium 3, a precious gas that apparently offers a limitless source of clean energy for Earth. Then we meet the corporation's only lunar employee, Sam Bell (Rockwell). He's in the final weeks of his contract, desperately lonely, and looks a bit the worse for wear.

Shaggy, overweight and barely going through the motions, Sam aches to go home to a wife and young daughter he can talk to only via videotaped messages. Good thing he's aided in his lunar activities by a Hal-inspired, emoticon-faced robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), or his tasks might not even get done.

Alas, Gerty's not around when Sam, driving out to retrieve a tank of Helium 3, has a meltdown and crashes into a huge mining machine. Waking up from the crash later in sick bay, Sam appears to be suffering from amnesia. He looks fitter than before the crash, though, and he's being monitored far more closely by Gerty. As he starts doubting his sanity and puzzling out what's happened, the audience will be doing the same, albeit none too feverishly.

The chief problem isn't that Nathan Parker's insufficiently twisty screenplay — based on a story by director Jones (nee Zowie Bowie, son of David) — dabbles overmuch in the psycho half of psychodrama.

Or that Rockwell, who's pretty charismatic as he holds the screen for two hours all by himself, ever stumbles while illuminating a fractured personality that is both at war with itself and its own best friend. The actor proves capable of embodying all sorts of contradictory impulses as his character becomes tragically self-aware.

But he can't overcome a plot that goes slack at precisely the moment it should be soaring, or a corporate-villainy premise that practically begs not to be looked at too closely. I'm as willing as the next guy to believe that unfettered capitalism is the sworn enemy of the working stiff, and that greed can cause a corporation to devalue the humanity of its workers. But start calculating the costs to Lunar Industries of its singular form of devaluing, and Moon 's central premise stops making sense.

Jones marshals special-effects wizardry — and Rockwell's charisma — to finesse such objections more or less right up to the final credits. But once you emerge from the darkness of the multiplex, credibility evaporates on the instant.

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moon movie review

"Sometimes Beautiful and Intense, But Falls Short"

moon movie review

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moon movie review

What You Need To Know:

(PaPa, B, ACap, PC, LLL, VV, S, N, M) Strong slightly mixed pagan worldview with light moral elements, plus some implied anti-capitalist content and a politically correct joke is made about illegal immigration; 44 mostly strong obscenities (including many “f” words), nine strong profanities and three light profanities; some strong violence with blood includes man injured inside lunar vehicle, lunar vehicles crash, two men fight, and man’s bloody injuries seem to get worse instead of heal; astronaut on the moon has a dream of sex with his wife on Earth; brief upper and rear male nudity; no alcohol; no smoking; and, lying and deceit by bad employer.

More Detail:

MOON is a beautiful-looking science fiction movie that’s also an intense character study. There is plenty of strong foul language and brief sexual content, however, which require extreme caution.

The story opens in the near future on the moon. Astronaut Sam Bell (played by the talented Sam Rockwell) lives alone on the far side of the moon to complete a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, extraction of Helium-3, a real substance that could be used for clean nuclear fusion. Sam’s only company is Gerty, the computer that runs the station (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Sam’s time is almost up, however, and he longs to reunite with his wife and young daughter back on earth.

Sam’s mental and physical health suddenly starts to deteriorate. This leads to a nearly fatal accident on a routine check-up of some mining equipment outside.

While recuperating back at the base (with no memory how he got there), Sam meets a younger clone of himself. They realize they are both clones. As the older Sam is dying, his younger clone tries to escape from the moonbase and head to Earth.

Despite its lower budget, this independent movie has excellent special effects. It also is an intimate character study.

Though MOON is well acted and doesn’t lack for personal drama, it leaves some questions unanswered. Also, since the human characters involved are clones with fake memories, the emotional depth of the movie leaves a bit to be desired. The issues at stake for the characters are also slightly undermined.

MOON also contains plenty of strong foul language and a brief, but not very explicit, sex scene. Thus, extreme caution is warranted.

Though they are obviously very different movies in many ways, MOON could have learned a few things about writing a better, cleaner science fiction script from Pixar’s WALL-E.

'Empire Waist' Review: A Fashionable Tale of Friendship and Confidence

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Wayfarer Studios and American High have consistently been providing quality teen entertainment in the past few years. From Five Feet Apart and Clouds for the former and Crush and Plan B for the latter, I was excited to see both logos pop up at the beginning of Empire Waist . Luckily, I was not disappointed, as the film proves a welcome addition to both companies’ catalog of films .

What Is ‘Empire Waist’ About?

Empire Wais t follows Lenore ( Mia Kaplan ), a teen girl who’s essentially invisible at school — and likes it that way. Bigger than most of her classmates, she’s a prime target for bullies like mean girl Sylvie ( Isabella Pisacane ). Instead of attempting to make friends, Lenore plays it safe and embraces her loner status , avoiding eye contact and spending all of her time sketching outfits. Her home life isn’t the easiest either. While her quirky dad ( Rainn Wilson ) is supportive, her mom ( Missi Pyle ) constantly works out and goes on intense diets, putting pressure on Lenore to do the same.

Lenore’s life changes, however, when she’s paired up with Kayla ( Jemima Yevu ) for a class project. Though Kayla’s also plus-sized, she has no interest in hiding anything about herself. Confident and charismatic, Kayla eventually gets Lenore out of her shell, even encouraging her to enter a competitive fashion design showcase. The two enlist the school outcasts as models, including the queer and disabled Marcy ( Daisy Washington ), shy and petite Diamond ( Kassandra Tellez ), and trans tall girl Tina ( Holly McDowell ). Though they’re a diverse group, they all have one thing in common: They can’t seem to find any clothes they like that fit them. Lenore is able to make her new friends feel empowered with the outfits she makes, and in the process, she slowly starts to gain some self-esteem , too.

‘Empire Waist’ Captures the Nuances of Fatphobia

Missi Pyle in Empire Waist

As someone who’s been fat and struggled with body image my entire life, Empire Waist hit me hard. The scene where Lenore has to stand on the scale during her physical disturbed me more than a lot of horror movies — there’s a specific trauma tied to that experience to which many will sadly be able to relate. The line about a nutritionist telling Lenore that a single slice of pizza is an entire serving cut just as deep. Though they’re meant to help, these kinds of interactions with doctors can cause lasting mental harm, especially for impressionable teen girls. Kaplan gives a touching and raw performance, gamely digging deep and diving into these hard, sensitive insecurities. She will break your heart over and over again as she talks about feeling disgusting and undeserving of nice things.

Empire Waist adds another excellent layer by focusing on Lenore’s complicated relationship with her mother. It would be easy to paint her mom as a cruel, one-dimensional villain, but writer-director Claire Ayoub smartly forgoes that route in her script and direction, both of which are enhanced by the underrated Pyle’s genuine performance. Lenore’s mother clearly cares about her, but the way she shows it is harmful, trying to protect her by shielding her from the world and nudging her to change herself instead of embracing who she is here and now. We find out that this stems from Lenore’s mother’s constant nitpicking of her own appearance — something that was instilled in her by her own mother — which goes to show that this kind of toxic thinking is often intergenerational .

Unfortunately, there’s not as much complexity when it comes to Sylvie. The mean girl acts as a cliche antagonist, and the attempt to dig into why she’s such a bully is oversimplified without a satisfying resolution . While much of the writing is sharp and witty, Sylvie’s dialogue feels dated and amateurish, making her fall flat even as an adversary. There are ways to have fun even with roles like this, but Empire Waist relies too heavily on predictable tropes.

‘Empire Waist’ Never Loses Its Sense of Fun and Celebration

Cast of Empire Waist walking down hallway

Empire Waist suffers a similar issue to Prom Dates , another American High production, in that it’s difficult to pin down the target audience . Much of the dialogue and plot points would feel at home on Disney Channel, but there are some edgier moments — like Kayla going into a bedroom with a boy and a revealing photo of her circulating — that are tailored to an older crowd. The film struggles to figure out who it’s for.

Still, there’s an undeniable charm to it regardless of the age at which you watch it. The jokes aren’t always the most groundbreaking, but they are frequently funny, and it’s a treat to watch the actors deliver them. The whole ensemble has an undeniably enjoyable chemistry, bringing energy and authenticity to their roles , though Yevu brings a special spark to the screen in her first role of hopefully many. Though she doesn’t get as much screen time, McDowell emerges as another comedic standout, delivering her outlandish lines (“You’re going to shoot Lenore for wearing a cardigan?!” she exclaims at one point. “I was hit in the face with a signal flare once,” she divulges at another.) with hilarious precision. She’d be right at home in a Bottoms -like movie. The cast is delightfully diverse, with each character celebrating their differences without ever feeling boxed in or reduced to a single attribute. Their friendship with one another is a beautiful thing to witness indeed.

The platonic love is by far the strongest element of Empire Waist , but the romantic subplot is sweet, too . It’s hard not to root for the adorably supportive Charlie ( Aric Floyd ), Lenore’s photograph-shooting, LARP-loving crush. And I’d be remiss not to shout out Mrs. Hall ( Jolene Purdy ), the encouraging teacher , as well. Ayoub smartly casts a plus-size woman in this role, which makes the dynamic hit even harder. Purdy makes the most of her time, too. (Her delivery of “I was gonna yell at you about that Wikipedia-ass presentation” made me laugh out loud.)

Empire Waist features a moving tribute to friendship dressed up in a bright, colorful package . While it’s not immune to tropes and predictable story beats in some areas, the way it tackles issues of body image is rare and refreshingly nuanced. It’s a necessary film for a younger crowd who can relate to Lenore in the present moment and a healing one for those who have graduated to the next phases of their lives but still carry the painful memories of a doctor’s office scale.

empire waist

Empire Waist

‘Empire Waist’ occasionally falls into predictable tropes, but the way it tackles body image and focuses on friendship makes it well worth a watch.

Follows a group of teens learning to love their bodies through inclusive fashion design and friendship.

  • Mia Kaplan grounds the film with her touching lead performance, while Jemima Yevu and Holly McDowell are standouts in their supporting roles.
  • The film?s mother-daughter relationship is both nuanced and relatable.
  • The movie never loses its sense of fun, celebrating the friendship and diversity at the heart of it.
  • The film?s combination of younger dialogue and more mature themes makes its target audience unclear.
  • The film retreads familiar story beats of the genre, particularly when it comes to its mean girl character.

Empire Waist is now in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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Critic’s Pick

‘Megalopolis’ Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola

The director’s latest is a great-man story about an architect, played by Adam Driver, driven by ideals and big plans. It’s a personal statement on an epic scale.

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A man and woman embrace while floating above a New York City skyline with girders.

By Manohla Dargis

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there. At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it was both warmly received and glibly dismissed, a critical divide that’s nothing new for Coppola, a restlessly experimental filmmaker with a long habit of going off-Hollywood.

Nothing if not au courant, “Megalopolis” is a vision of a moribund civilization, though also a great-man story about an architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of a better world. An enigmatic genius (he has a Nobel Prize) with an aristocratic mien and a flair for drama, Catilina lives in a city that resembles today’s New York by way of ancient Rome, though it mostly looks like an elaborate soundstage. As familiar as Fifth Avenue and as obscure as the far side of the moon, it is a world that mirrors its real counterpart as a playpen for the wealthy and a prison-house for the destitute. The city haunts Catilina; it also inspires him.

What Catilina dreams of is a “perfect school-city,” in which people can achieve their better selves. It’s an exalted aspiration, as seemingly boundless but also as sheltering as the blue sky, and one that invokes a long line of lofty dreamers and master builders. There are predictable obstacles, mostly other people, small-minded types without vision, idealism or maybe just faith. Among these is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a consummate politician with no patience for fantasies or for Catilina. Their animosity runs through the story, which is narrated by Catilina’s aide, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), dense with incident and populated by an array of noble souls and posturing fools.

The fools prove better company in “Megalopolis” than most of the upright types, though with their all-too human comedy they’re not always distinguishable. They begin rushing in after the jolting opener, which finds Catilina dressed in inky black and uncertainly climbing out of a window in the crown of the Chrysler Building. Before long, he is standing with one foot firmly planted and the other shakily raised over the edge. He calls out “time stop” and everything — the clouds above, the cars below — freezes, only to restart at his command. He looks like a colossus, though also brings to mind the early-cinema clown Harold Lloyd hanging over a different abyss in “Safety Last!” (a title that could work for this audacious movie).

It’s quite the to-be-or-not introduction. Given that filmmakers are in the business of stopping time, Catilina’s entrance also reads as an auteurist mission statement. So it’s a relief when Catilina gets off that precipice, even if Coppola never really does. The filmmaker has a thing for dreamers and their great, big dreams, and it’s easy to see “Megalopolis” — which he mentioned in interviews as early as 1983 — in autobiographical terms. Like Catilina, Coppola has endured and almost been consumed by catastrophic setbacks (most notably with his founding of a film studio that nearly ruined him), only to rise phoenixlike from the ashes. It’s one reason that “Megalopolis” feels like a personal statement on an epic scale.

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Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire

moon movie review

The end is just “the start of something,” according to one of the action-figure-deep heroes of “Rebel Moon—Part One: Child of Fire,” the lumbering first half of Zack Snyder ’s planned two-part “ Star Wars ” knockoff. After 133 minutes (give or take seven for credits), Snyder’s latest gang of misfits are finally ready to fight space Nazis. It’s Akira Kurosawa in space again, only this time everything’s rendered with storyboard perfection and a frustrating emphasis on sheer visual scale, despite a general lack of eye-catching details.

Snyder (“ Army of the Dead ”) and his two credited co-writers, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad , never really try to be original. Instead, they joyless trudge through formulaic territory, only now with a bigger budget and a Snyder-y compulsion to replicate the looks and styles of other movies and comic books, among other media. “Rebel Moon” often looks more like an animated pitch for a movie than an actual movie with human characters, urgent drama, emotional stakes, and so forth.

Everything’s big—and corny, and ungainly—in “Rebel Moon,” starting with the space farmers who try and obviously fail to resist a visiting party of space fascists, representing the Motherworld’s formerly great colonial power. The farmers are initially led by a brawny Corey Stoll , whose needlessly swole physique and braided pushbroom beard ostensibly contrasts his character with Admiral Atticus Noble ( Ed Skrein ), a very pale goose-stepper with a short temper and an army at his back.

Stoll’s character dies pretty quickly, because even a father figure with a barrel chest and Viking Snuffleupagus beard cannot defeat Noble and his fellow would-be overlords. Now the farmers of, oh gosh, Veldt must plan for the Motherworld’s next visit. Their champion, a petite farmer with a past named Kora ( Sofia Boutella ), then sets out to find warriors who can train her people to fight back. She finds stock types with prominently exoticized backgrounds, like the Scottish mercenary Kai ( Charlie Hunnam ) and the beastmaster prince Tarak ( Staz Nair ), now a slave.

As usual, Snyder doesn’t seem to care about these characters so much as he likes their style-guide features, like their cleavage, their haircuts, and their hard-stressed accents. Some actors, like Hunnam and Stoll, dig in with both hands, but not everyone fares as well with dialogue that never stops expositing even as matte-painting replica landscape shots threaten to swallow up whoever’s pushing the plot this time around. It’s usually Kora, but other characters help to establish the movie’s passing interest in the usual post-“Star Wars” space opera themes of resistance, hope, and compassion, mostly through bumpersticker dialogue and G.I. Joe poses.

Some critics will joke that “Rebel Moon” resembles A.I. art since it slouches through the motions of another space opera homage without much art, grace, or human discernment. Others would do well to remember that this sort of over-produced van art cinema has always been Snyder’s style. In his previous movies’ better moments, you can see Snyder and his collaborators’ joy in trying to synthesize a grab bag of tropes and ideas into mildly canny maximalist epics. Viewers’ expectations are still often only tweaked and not subverted, like in the “Rebel Moon” scene where Kora rescues fellow Veldt farmer Gunnar ( Michiel Huisman ) from a gross-looking alien publican who grabs Gunnar’s crotch and threatens to rape him at a Mos Eisley-style tavern.

Kora still gets called a “bitch” a couple of times by Gunnar’s attacker, but then she gets to fly around the bar at a typically Snyder-y slow-fast-slow clip. That over-compensatory style of speed-toggling action, also known as speed-ramping, has been Snyder’s signature move for a while now. So has paying lip service to female protagonists who, at best, get to posture more than their male co-stars. Still, it’s hard to care about Kora or supporting characters like the laser-sword-wielding cyborg Nemesis (Doona Bae), who also wears a wide-brimmed Korean gat on her head. Then again, women aren’t the only ones who get negligible consideration, as we see when Tarak whispers pseudo-folksy wisdom and wrangles a black griffin that looks a lot like Toothless the dragon. Everybody walks and talks like a robot here, but only some are meant to be read as robotic.

“Rebel Moon” also only really looks good when it’s focused on things crashing into or flying above other things. Sometimes they hover over and then crash into things, which has its appeal. Unfortunately, none of the fun or affection that likely went into the making of “Rebel Moon” has survived the transition from storyboard to screen, making it harder to care when characters tease viewers with perverse humor—watch out for those tentacles, Atticus!—or aching sincerity. (“Kindness is a virtue worth fighting for”) Heroes like Kora circulate in order to justify prefab epic-ness, but they don’t make “Rebel Moon” move any faster towards its foregone cliffhanger ending. And yet it moves, I guess.

In theaters now. On Netflix December 22nd.

moon movie review

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

moon movie review

  • Sofia Boutella as Kora
  • Djimon Hounsou as General Titus
  • Charlie Hunnam as Kai
  • Michiel Huisman as Gunnar
  • Staz Nair as Tarak
  • Bae Doona as Nemesis
  • Ray Fisher as Darrian Bloodaxe
  • Cleopatra Coleman as Devra Bloodaxe
  • E. Duffy as Milius
  • Anthony Hopkins as Jimmy (voice)
  • Jena Malone as Harmada
  • Ed Skrein as Admiral Atticus Noble
  • Corey Stoll as
  • Cary Elwes as King of the Galactic Empire
  • Kurt Johnstad
  • Shay Hatten
  • Zack Snyder

Original Music Composer

  • Tom Holkenborg

Director of Photography

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  1. Moon (Film)

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  1. Rebel Moon Movie Review

  2. Full moon movie review

  3. Fly Me To The Moon… (Movie Review)

  4. The Moon (2023) Movie Review Tamil

  5. The Moon Review Telugu @kittuworldcinematalks

  6. SCAM of the YEAR! 😱 Rebel Moon

COMMENTS

  1. Moon

    Astronaut Sam Bell's (Sam Rockwell) three-year shift at a lunar mine is finally coming to an end, and he's looking forward to his reunion with his wife (Dominique McElligott) and young daughter ...

  2. How do they convince them to sign up for those long hitches?

    I lean toward the second theory. After the mission carrying Dave Bowman disappeared beyond Jupiter, mankind decided to focus on the moon, where we were already, you will recall, conducting operations. In "Moon," the interior design of the new lunar station was influenced by the "2001" ship, and the station itself is supervised by Gerty ...

  3. Moon Movie Review

    Our review: Parents say (4 ): Kids say (1 ): A huge, mind-expanding existential exploration wrapped up in an exciting futuristic, unpredictable psychological drama steeped in mystery. In short, Moon is great sci-fi. The depth, vision, and scope debut director Duncan Jones achieves with a modest $5 million budget, a single set, and one lead ...

  4. Moon (2009 film)

    Moon. (2009 film) Moon is a 2009 science fiction film directed by Duncan Jones (in his directorial debut) and written by Nathan Parker from a story by Jones. The film follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon.

  5. Moon (2009)

    Moon: Directed by Duncan Jones. With Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw. Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

  6. Moon (2009)

    Moon is an auspicious debut from Duncan Jones (née Zowie Bowie), a talented new director who happens to be the son of David Bowie (let me officially be the first person to predict that every review of this film in the mainstream press will have the tagline "SPACE ODDITY!"). Sam Rockwell gives a truly remarkable performance as Sam Bell, a lunar miner who is nearing the end of his 3-year ...

  7. Moon

    Moon is a small-scale film, but, thanks in no small part to Rockwell, its mix of thematic grandeur and human drama makes it a worthy successor to those 1970s science fiction films that inspired it.

  8. Moon Review

    Read the Empire Movie review of Moon. They do make 'em like they used to — a fresh blast of old-school sci-fi, bursting with ideas and a...

  9. Planet Earth Is Blue and So Very Far Away

    The smallness of this movie is decidedly a virtue, but also, in the end, something of a limitation. "Moon" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).

  10. Moon

    A movie with both a brain and a heart. Full Review | Original Score: 82/100 | Jun 5, 2013. Jay Antani Cinema Writer. Intriguing, imaginative, and thematically ambitious, Moon gives ample proof ...

  11. Moon Ending, Explained

    Moon Ending, Explained. By Jack Walters. Published Feb 20, 2023. The ending of Duncan Jones's Moon raises several questions about the nature of humanity, exploring the film's themes of autonomy and exploitation through a powerful conclusion that leaves several important plot points open-ended. It features Sam Rockwell as multiple versions of a ...

  12. Moon

    Astronaut Sam Bell's (Sam Rockwell) three-year shift at a lunar mine is finally coming to an end, and he's looking forward to his reunion with his wife (Domi...

  13. Moonfall

    In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the ...

  14. Moon (2009) film review

    Moon (2009) film review - loneliness, life, and technology (spoiler-free) So, last night I watched 'Moon' and I absolutely loved it. To me, this sci-fi film was more a compelling drama about loneliness and courage, but it also offers a warning about the future of technological advancement. I wanted to share an excerpt from my review of this fantastic film, and see what others had to say about it.

  15. Moon Review

    Screen Rant reviews Moon. Moon is the debut feature film by writer/director Duncan Jones. The film stars Sam Rockwell, the voice of Kevin Spacey and... actually just those two, really. The film is set on the lunar base Selene in a future where Helium 3, a gas mined from the moon's surface, holds the key to reversing Earth's energy crisis.

  16. Movie Review

    The film opens with an ad for Lunar Industries, a massive corporation that's mining the moon to extract Helium 3, a precious gas that apparently offers a limitless source of clean energy for Earth ...

  17. MOON

    Is MOON family friendly? Find out only at Movieguide. The Family and Christian Guide to Movie Reviews and Entertainment News.

  18. In the Shadow of the Moon movie review (2019)

    Sometimes a movie that is a bit of everything can end being not enough of anything. "In the Shadow of the Moon" isn't effective as sci-fi, action, noir, mystery, or even social commentary, even though it has elements of all of the above. What saves it from complete disaster is Mickle's technical skill—he washes the film in nice blues ...

  19. The Moon

    The Moon is a solid action adventure drama, a mixed genre film that has a whole lot going and a whole lot going for it. Rated: 4/5 • Mar 12, 2024. Once "The Moon" grabs your attention, it ...

  20. Fly Me to the Moon movie review (2024)

    July 11, 2024. 5 min read. "Fly Me to the Moon" lurches wildly from zippy, retro rom-com to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again. Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti 's film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are ...

  21. Killers of the Flower Moon movie review (2023)

    Killers of the Flower Moon is like a puzzle—each creative piece does its part to form the complete picture.

  22. 'Empire Waist' Review

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  24. 'Megalopolis' Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola

    Much happens, including love, death, a bloody intrigue and a bacchanalia with a three-ring circus, racing chariots and writhing bodies. Amid all this tumult, Catilina falls in love with the mayor ...

  25. Rebel Moon

    Rebel Moon often looks more like an animated pitch for a movie than an actual movie with human characters, urgent drama, emotional stakes, and so forth.