Considering David Bowie’s longstanding and highly lucrative infatuation with all things celestial, e.g. Space Oddity (1969), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Station to Station (1976), and Earthling (1997), it’s no surprise that his son’s directorial debut would likewise reach beyond the terrestrial.

It is the near future and Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a sort of corporate engineer/astronaut is nearing the end of a grueling three-year stint as the sole manager of a space station on the far side of the Moon.  His employer, Lunar Industries, harvests the Helium-3 embedded in the moon from solar winds billions of years ago to use in controlled nuclear fusion that remedies the effects of earth’s depleted resources.  His only companionship comes in the form of the HAL 9000′s distant cousin, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a nearly sentient supercomputer that operates the station’s mechanical and electrical systems.

With only two weeks left on his assignment things turn south.  Sam, utterly exhausted and yearning for his wife and child at home, begins to notice a series of very subtle, almost fleeting irregularities manifested as glitches in a video transmission or oddities in Gerty’s demeanor.  Are these just the effects of an aging system or full-blown paranoid delusions–or something else entirely?  The mysterious cause of these aberrations, and their surprisingly portentous implications are at the core of “Moon.”

Jones and his writer, Nathan Parker, overtly pay homage to genre classics with a grab-bag of sci-fi tropes.  Everything from the realistically utilitarian set design to the weighty questions of humanity’s ultimate place in the universe hearken back to the days when science fiction meant something more than just Autobots vs. Decepticons.  The fingerprints of sci-fi luminaries like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Terry Gilliam, Douglas Trumbull, Peter Hyams, and Stanley Kubrick can be readily seen in the composition and themes of “Moon.”  But, rather than simply rehash decades-old ideas and concepts, Jones reassembles the proven elements of a tired genre into a modern vehicle equipped to fulfill its long-forgotten prime directive.

Lending meaning and characterization to the ambitious ideas of “Moon” is the dynamic Sam Rockwell who’s powerhouse performance, if delivered by a more well-known star, would surely garner an Oscar nod.  Effortlessly slipping through the gamut of human emotions, Rockwell has a knack for finding and exploiting the truth in every triumph and every demoralizing setback. After a string of shining supporting roles in films like “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Snow Days,” and “Frost/Nixon” it’s about time one of Hollywood’s unique talents is finally getting his due.

“Moon” is a flawed labor of love that fails to delve as deep into the outer reaches of mankind’s cosmic potential as it could have, but lends hope to the possibility that cinema may someday get there.