The Moon

After an accident during Korea's lunar mission, one astronaut is left aboard. Ground control is helpless, and the only person who can help is the former centre director who walked away years ago after a failed mission. The connection between the two men is explained later. Kim Yong-hwa directed. Doh Kyung-soo plays the astronaut, Sol Kyung-gu the former director. It was one of the most expensive Korean productions ever, with special rigs built for the space sequences; the weightlessness and the lunar surface carry its visual ambition. At the box office it failed badly and wrote off serious losses for the producing company. The telling pushes the emotional register very high; the balance between technical realism and melodrama does not hold, and that is where the criticism concentrated. Kim Yong-hwa had made the Along with the Gods series before and carries the same emotional structure into space here. Who it is for: viewers interested in large-scale Korean genre production. Who it is not for: anyone wanting restrained science fiction; the film is always hunting an emotional peak.