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Science fiction can encompass many genres–suspense, horror, action-adventure, romance, even comedy–but director Duncan Jones’s Moon doesn’t fit neatly into any of them. This smart, provocative film has no aliens or cool spaceships, and the effects (mostly consisting of model vehicles lumbering across the lunar surface) aren’t all that special; instead, the material is character- and story-driven, centering on an excellent, multilayered performance by Sam Rockwell. The scene is some undetermined point in the future. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an employee of Lunar Industries, the company responsible for mining a fusion energy source called Helium-3, which is vital to Earth’s efforts to reverse a serious energy crisis and can only be found on the far side of the Moon. Sam is all by himself, and as he nears the end of his three-year contract, the solitude is starting to get to him (“Three years is a long haul,” he says. “Way, way, way too long. I’m talking to mys (more…)