The Box

This is mainstream Richard Kelly.

A married couple who are apparently strapped for cash however their house is massive and the husband drives a stingray corvette? receive a mysterious box in the mail with a large red button on it. Later they are visited by a dapper disfigured stranger who explains if they press the button they will receive 1 million bucks but someone they don't know will die. 
Cameron ends up pressing it and some mysterious shit goes down but kind of obvious mysterious shit. It's as if studios would only let Richard Kelly make another film after Southland Tales if he told a linear story with unnecessary explanation along the way for any weirdo bits. 
The 70s setting never feels natural (like Cameron Diaz's face) and I kept waiting for a musical number to kick in to liven things up but nope, he manages to sneak in watery portals and another explanation book a la the history of time travel but no musical number this time.

Orange face Cameron Diaz is terrible and can't remember his face because he's too boring James Marsden is .. ? I can't even remember he is so bland. Frank Langella is the only stand out and that's due mostly to his snazzy suit and burnt out face.

I like this story, questioning how people can do something terrible as long as they can't actually see it happen but it's a short story not a 2 hour movie. The casting is terrible really terrible. Maybe with better suited actors this would be a more enjoyable thing to watch but as is it doesn't work.

NO - People walked out of this because it was so boring.  

Moon


Holy shit what a first movie. Duncan Jones wrote and directed this and had made a really great lowkey sci fi.

Sam Rockwell is a contractor for Lunar Industries who run a Helium-3 mining operation on the moon. It's mostly automated so they only require one person stationed there to send the payloads back to earth. He communicates with earth via satellite and has a mobile robot attendant, Gerty who hangs from the ceiling and can move throughout the facitlity via tracks.
The movie sets up his day to day routine on the base before revealing that he's starting to suffer from the isolation. He goes out to repair one of the havesters but has an accident that renders him unconscious, waking up back at the base Gerty explains what happened but somethings not right and when Sam sneaks out to investigate the broken harvester he discovers something not right at all...

It's Sam's show and he's great. He's extremely likable which is lucky because he's the only person in this whole movie (not counting his wife on satellite and one sentence from Matt Berry also via satellite) and he's never overly actorly it always feels like he's just making up everything he says.

The only bum note is using Kevin Spaceys voice for Gerty - should of been Matt Berry actually no that would of been too theatrical but definately entertaining "Sam you were involved in an highly un-use-she-ual accident on the harvester..." maybe a female voice? I'm not sure but NOT Kevin Spacey.

YES - made with love.