I woke up this morning thinking I really needed to just go ahead and blog about Moon, one of the best movies I’ve seen recently. I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now, but today the above title came to me and as a result I’ve had the Lou Reed song I borrowed it from running through my head all day.

Moon is the first feature film directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Jones (aka David Bowie), starring Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey. There are a handful of other actors listed in the credits, but these are limited to appearing in video transmissions from Earth to the facility on the moon where the story takes place.

Rockwell plays a character aptly named Sam, while Spacey is his robotic companion GERTY (the acronym stands for something, I’m sure, but in an interview I saw Duncan Jones claims he can’t remember). Sam is the seemingly-lone worker in a facility on the moon, the function of which is to extract Helium-3 from moon rocks. As he nears the end of his three-year contract, the viewer sees just how lonely and isolated Sam has become. Due to some kind of accident early in his contract, live communication with Earth is impossible, so he must rely on recorded video transmissions to interact with his wife and the daughter who was born after he left Earth.

As Sam gets closer to the end of his contract, he’s also losing his marbles just a little bit. He begins to have hallucinations and ultimately is involved in an accident in one of the vehicles he uses to make maintenance trips out to the harvesters. Yeah, nothing but moon for miles and you manage to crash? Some bad driving there, Sammy.

From here, the story takes a few interesting turns and if you haven’t seen it yet I suggest you do. And I further suggest if you haven’t been spoiled for anything in the movie, don’t do any kind of reading up on it. I knew a little bit going into it, and though it didn’t ruin it for me, it did have an effect on the impact that the story had upon me. That said, it’s a great movie, one I’ll be watching again and one I’d highly recommend to anyone.

While there is the obvious 2001: A Space Odyssey connection–GERTY is very much a nod to HAL9000–the movie I was most reminded of was Silent Running, which starred Bruce Dern as one of three men on a spaceship left in care of the Earth’s last remaining live plants.

Anyhow, see it. It’s really very good. And as I mentioned earlier, that it was completely overlooked in Sunday night’s Celebrity Fashion Show and Awards Ceremony is proof that there’s something very wrong with that show.

Although I’m not even certain I believe in the term “Guilty Pleasures” as I have no shame when it comes to my tastes and what people think of them…I do indeed have a movie that I love that everyone else hates.  Really hate. I’m talking of one Freddy Got Fingered. You heard me right.  My best friend and I saw this box-office bomb in the theater when it came out, and both fell in love with it.

Written, directed, and starring one Tom Green, this film is a complete exercise in bad taste, gore, and over-the-top shock humor.  The story, as it were, follows Gourd, (Green) as cartoonist who sets off to La-La land to make all his dreams come true. He winds up working in a cheese sandwich factory.  Along the way, we the viewer are treated to scene after scene of Tom Green being Tom Green. If you’ve seen his previous work, you’ll know if this movie is for you, if you have not, don’t rent this.  A few highlights?  Uh…Tom getting very friendly with a variety of animals, including a bull elephant?  A wheelchair bound girlfriend heavily into S&M?  Tom “helping” a woman give birth? Tom accusing his father of child abuse?  A young boy getting constantly, and pointlessly injured?

Yup. It’s all here.

I think what I like the most about this film is how Tom goes all out to make a movie that he wanted to make. Every frame is filled with crazy, dark, perverse craziness. You will most likely hate this….but you may be one of the few who love it.

Oh! and you get to see Rip Torn’s naked ass. ‘Nuff Said.

So I finally had a chance to watch “The Boondock Saints” (1999)

Written and directed by Troy Duffy and starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Billy Connolly, David Della Rocco and the INCREDIBLY creepy Willem Dafoe.

The story revolves around two brothers (Flanery and Reedus) who decide to become vigilantes, believing they were chosen to rid the world of evil, after murdering a couple of Russian mob thugs. Dafoe plays FBI agent, Paul Smecker, who is investigating the ever-growing trail of bodies left behind by the brothers.

At first I kinda dismissed this as a “guy” movie (don’t judge…y’know there are “chick-flicks”), but there were definitely aspects of this film I enjoyed. Billy Connolly’s role was small, but made me super giddy at his easy change from the usual sweet funny-man to cold-blooded killer. Flanery and Reedus had good chemistry together, but their characters did not engage me as much as I had hoped.

David Della Rocco and Willem Dafoe stole the screen time for me.

Dafoe’s Agent Smecker is a strange combination of psychotic, ruthless and also very frightened of his true nature. The little added character bits Duffy puts in for Smecker made me understand him 10 times more than the two brothers. But maybe that was the idea…to keep us guessing who those boys really were, while Smecker’s inner self was splashed across the screen just as much as the blood from the falling bodies.

David Della Rocco just made me laugh. His role as a small time mafia goon who makes one dangerous mistake after another (the thing with the cat…oh man) had me interested in every move he made.

All in all, I liked it….maybe not as much as Jeremy (sorry, Boss!), but I can see why it has become a cult classic.

Finishing kudos? Ron Jeremy getting “whacked” in the Sin Bin. That’s comedy.