Someday, Sam Rockwell will get his Oscar due, I have no doubt. But I bet that when that day comes, lots of movie lovers will look back and say, "But it should have happened for Moon." Rockwell has always been riveting on-screen, but his extraordinary performance in the Twilight Zone-ish mind frak that is Duncan Jones' Moon is far beyond anything he's ever achieved before. We just don't see movies like this one much: simple yet profound, obvious on the surface yet deepening with conundrums with each unfolding layer. And it's all down to Rockwell. Moon is a one-man show -- Rockwell has no one to play off of but the voice of Kevin Spacey as a sort of rethought Hal 9000 ... and another version of himself. If acting is reacting, and Rockwell has little but himself to react against, then his performance here as lunar roughneck Sam Bell is Rockwell laying himself bare as an artist ... and thrilling us and surprising us and engaging us at every turn.

Moon is not a movie to be spoiled, but here's the gist: In the near future, Bell is the lone worker at a mostly automated moon base mining helium to be sent back to Earth to power the planet. He's lonely, but his three-year contract is just about up, and he'll be heading home in a few short weeks. And then, after an accident outside, when he'd gone to repair some mining equipment, he wakes up on the base to find ... another Sam Bell looking after him.

Has Sam gone crazy in his solitude? Did Gertie -- the Spacey-voiced computer -- clone him, for some bizarre reason? What the hell is going on?

And so Rockwell, all on his lonesome but doubled up with himself, gets to explore notions of identity (who are we, really? what does it mean to be an individual person?) and memory (do memories count if they're fake?) and self-determination (are we always our own person?). Moon wouldn't work without an actor of Rockwell's immense talent to pull it off, and that deserves a lot more recognition than it's gotten.

Who would I remove from the list of actual nominees in order to make room for Rockwell? Either Jeff Bridges or Morgan Freeman. I love both actors dearly, but it's a bald fact that neither of their performances is as intriguing as Rockwell's. Freeman's South African twang comes and goes as Nelson Mandela in Invictus, and a bare minimum of Oscar-worthiness should be "maintaining the accent." Bridges is very fine indeed as a washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart, but there's nothing revelatory in what he does with the character: the actor and the character and the film are so familiar that the movie feels like something you've seen before even when you're watching it for the first time.

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MaryAnn Johanson is over the moon at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)