Moon (2009)

It has been so long since I've seen or read a really good hard science, science fiction story and then I get two in two days. You can't really beat that. HSF can run the gamut from epic to personal. I think it does this better than other forms of sf or fantasy because the focus is on the point of the story and science is necessary to the story , not in some McGuffin kind of way, but in an environmental kind of way. In many cases the science provides the setting as well as the mechanism for telling the story.
This film is all about Sam Rockwell. Much of the film is spent talking to a robotic arm that has Kevin Spacey's voice coming out of it, and the rest of the film is pent talking to himself (he plays multiple roles in the film). He inhabits the Sam Bell character in all of it's facets. The way he reacts to the earthshattering revelations, well earthshattering to him at least, seems very believable. I'm not sure how I would react to things if I had been living completely alone for three years, I think I might be a bit more, um, crazy than he is.
I loved the relationship between Sam and his robot companion Gerty. It was extremely reminiscent of the human-robot interaction in Robot & Frank. But, since this movie came first by three years, it's really the other film borrowing from this. I think this particular question, of can humans form friendships with machines is very germaine to modern life and calls into question what constitutes friendship and how it is different from companionship. I guess these films both presume that friendship is necessary for a human's well being, I'm not sure that it is, but I'm not sure that it isn't.
I think the great thing about HSF is that it always leaves you thinking. Maybe I've just been lucky and only read the good books and watched the good movies, but there seems to always be a question raised, often a societal ideal, for the audience to be left pondering long after the book or film is done. Sure, other genres do this too, but not as consistently. Or maybe because I am such a fan of this subgenre I dig deeper into the stories than I do in other types. Either way, I get a lot of stories like this one and I for one appreciate ruminating being part of my entertainment.

Moon on IMDb