Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [39]
Unfortunately, Judge’s setup is much better than his payoff. The film wanders, repeats itself, and loses momentum. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend a movie this uneven, but there are so many hilarious ideas and gags during the film’s first half hour, I can’t resist calling it to your attention. I don’t see many films that make me laugh out loud, repeatedly; this one did, so I’m willing to forgive its inconsistency.
Incidentally, if you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of this film before, it was unceremoniously dumped into theaters with virtually no advertising or publicity. Mike Judge thought the studio was deliberately sabotaging his movie because he dared to make fun of the establishment. Maybe they just don’t have a sense of humor.
54. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
(2007)
Directed by David Sington
With:
BUZZ ALDRIN
ALAN BEAN
EUGENE CERNAN
MICHAEL COLLINS
CHARLES DUKE
JAMES LOVELL
EDGAR MITCHELL
HARRISON SCHMITT
DAVID SCOTT
JOHN YOUNG
When I heard seemingly unanimous praise for In the Shadow of the Moon at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I wasn’t surprised. After all, it’s a documentary about the United States’s Apollo space program, with NASA footage that hasn’t been seen since it was shot in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and interviews with ten surviving Apollo astronauts. How could it be bad? But until I saw it I couldn’t have appreciated what a moving experience it would be. It turned out to be one of my favorite films of the year.
Some astronauts, like Buzz Aldrin, have remained in the public eye, but others who flew to the moon never sought the limelight, and it’s their presence that helps make this film so special. Ten of the fifteen survivors agreed to appear on camera. As the film reminds us, these hand-picked space soldiers were the best and the brightest of their generation, groomed to be heroes. They remain also highly intelligent and articulate men today. Mike Collins comes off especially well.
Some of them spent their careers in the air force, while others moved on to other pursuits. Most of them are in their late seventies now and have a real sense of perspective about their experiences in space. They think about their place in the universe in a way no one else on earth possibly could.
They also speak with great feeling about their colleagues who died in the horrifying fire on a launchpad in Houston.
The one man who doesn’t appear in the film is Neil Armstrong, who first set foot on the moon in 1969…yet his absence also says something about the character of the man, who doesn’t feel like a hero and shuns the limelight.
British director David Sington deserves our gratitude for persuading so many astronauts to sit for extensive, candid interviews. If the film relied solely on these conversations it would be worthwhile, but Sington discovered that while NASA shot miles of color movie footage documenting every aspect of the space program, only a fraction of it was ever seen by the public. (Generally speaking, the agency would prepare a half-hour film about each mission, and that’s what news organizations and documentarians have drawn upon ever since.) He dug into the NASA vaults and came up with pure gold—incredible images in remarkable condition.
As the filmmaker told me, “It was one of those projects where everything miraculously seemed to come together.”
I may be prejudiced, having lived through this era, but I’d like to think that even young people who don’t know much about the U.S. space program would be impressed with these men, their missions, and what it all meant to Americans who’d been rocked by the Vietnam War and the social revolution of the time. Here was something we could all be proud of. Ron Howard captured those feelings beautifully in Apollo 13, as did the subsequent