Moon 44

Starring:Michael ParÃ©, Lisa Eichhorn, Dean Devlin, Brian Thompson, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Geoffreys, Leon Rippy, Jochen Nickel, Mehmet Yilmaz, John March, Drew Lucas, David Williamson (IX), Calvin Burke, Andy Howarth, William Begatie, Bernhard Bolden, Michael Antoniou, Bernhard Nickel, Thomas Nickel, Frederic Mills
Director: Roland Emmerich
Studio: Lions Gate
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Great back-story. So-so main story.
I'll Take This "B" Movie Over A Coma Anyday
moon 44 "EXCELLENT"!!!!!!!!!
Early effort from director of ID4, Stargate, and others...
In the Outer Zone... you need a friend.

Moon 44
Starring: Michael Paré , Lisa Eichhorn , Dean Devlin , Brian Thompson , and Malcolm McDowell
Director: Roland Emmerich
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Genres | DVD | Video

Space Adventure | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Genres | DVD | Video

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Similar Items:

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ASIN: B00005O5BD
Release Date: 2001-10-23

Customer Reviews:

Great back-story. So-so main story. .......2006-03-10

We have a very mixed bag here. On the one end you have a poorly executed plot rife with clichés and stereotypes. On the other hand you get an excellent back-story that far outshines the main one. Moon 44 is not your average B-movie fare. You get an interesting mix of good and bad that ultimately makes the movie worth watching… if you keep in mind certain things.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is the main plot can almost be completely discarded. It’s way too stereotypical and ultimately does nothing but give the good guys a reason to chase the bad guys and the bad guys a reason to be bad. This, more than anything else, makes Moon 44 no better than any other B-movie. Now that you have this in mind you can pave the way to see the excellent background story developing here. There are a couple of little sub-plots that really make the script shine. For instance there is a conflict between the pilot/convicts and their youthful navigators. This kind of storytelling makes for great drama and this is what’s pulled off perfectly. Other little things are going on in the back-story as well like the rivalry that turns into respect between Stone (Michael Pare) and one of the pilots Jake O’Neal (Brian Thompson) as well as several other tidbits. The great background characters and storylines are what save this movie from being just another clichéd B-Film.

The acting is also a mixed bag. Michael Pare doesn’t bring anything different to the table here with his tough-guy special operative role and Malcolm McDowell’s performance didn’t really give anything fresh to the movie either. I can’t really blame Pare and McDowell too much as their roles are a victim of a canned script. Dean Devlin however gives a brilliant performance as Tyler, the good-natured navigator who comes to terms with hard realities. I always enjoy seeing Brian Thompson in a film and I believe he is often an underrated talent. Other notable performances come from Leon Rippy and a quirky yet heartfelt performance by Stephen Geoffreys. As far as the rest of the supporting cast you do get some great performances. Overall the acting is quite good, save for a few standard performances

The sets look like this movie comes out of the Alien universe, which means they look cool and functional. You don’t get many dark and eerie Sci-Fi sets like that those anymore. The design for the gun ships is pretty cool even though they are still just helicopters. The robot attackers look cool, but you would think they would have had robot ships and not robots flying ships. I guess you can explain that away for various reasons, but it still sits odd with me. The special effects are serviceable considering this is a low budget movie. Probably the model work will be the thing that is most evident of a limited budget. Still I prefer to take all things into account and can easily forgive the limitations as the model work still looks reasonably realistic, and compared to other B-movies it’s downright excellent.

Moon 44 is a B-Movie. No doubt about it. However it’s one of the better B-Movies out there. If it wasn’t for the weak main plot and script that followed it you would have a truly great movie. As it stands the film is saved by very strong character development, great acting, well executed sub-plots, and better than average special effects. You will get a good movie if you can get past the main storyline, which isn’t too hard, as it seems to only be there to move events forward. If you’re just out for flashy effects and lots of action then I suppose you won’t find this movie as interesting as I did. For those of you driven by story and character development I say with Moon 44 you will find a diamond in the rough.

I'll Take This "B" Movie Over A Coma Anyday.......2005-09-19

I've seen hundreds of Sci Fi movies over the years. This is one of those you'll wonder whether you've watched it or not a few years down the road. You just can't remember.

All in all, I figure it's still better to watch a so-so Sci Fi movie than "Dances With Wolves" or "Evita". This movie will end up being non-memorable, but it's preferable to being in a coma.

moon 44 "EXCELLENT"!!!!!!!!!.......2005-08-31

THIS IS MOVIE IS A MUST SEE FOR ANY SCI-FICTION FAN,THE STORY IS GOOD,THE SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE GREAT,THEY DID IT THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, WITH MODELS, REAL EXPLOSIONS,HAND BLUIT MINIATURE LANDSCAPES,AND IT ALL LOOKS GREAT!. THE CAST IS ALSO PRETTY GOOD, YOU HAVE MALCOLM MCDOWELL AND MICHAEL PARE, THEY BOTH GIVE A DECENT PREFORMANCE IN THIS MOVIE,BUT?, ANYONE WHO WENT TOO THIS MOVIE WAS THERE TO SEE THE VERY NEET ATTACK HELICOPTERS. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT LITTLE MOVIE,WHICH DID SHOW IN A LOT OF MAJOR THEATRES IN (1989),AT THE VERY LEAST, THIS MOVIE IS WAY,WAY BETTER THAN ROLAND EMMERICH'S "GODAWFUL GODZILLA " MOVIE ,WHICH WAS A VERY, VERY ,BAD MOVIE!,INDEED.

Early effort from director of ID4, Stargate, and others..........2004-02-13

I first saw this film in 1991, after exhausting the sci-fi section at my local Blockbuster. A straight-to-video release (as I recall) I thought it a decent outer-space adventure. Grim, gritty, raw, it tries to be a combination of several genres: space opera, hardboiled detective novel, war movie. It succeeds at none of these, but taken as a whole is enjoyable weekend popcorn fare. Pare does a good job as our disaffected intellectual tough-guy hero, while other B and C list names show up for decent turns. Leon Rippy especially is fun as the failed, proud, bull-dogged Sergeant Sykes, while Malcom McDowell appears as the military commander whom you just know in your heart is up to no good, right from the start. Because, hey, it's Malcolm McDowell! Roscoe Lee Browne is also worth mentioning as the slick, coniving corporate boss. The special effects are of the limited-budget variety, and it's a shame Emmerich didn't have access to either CGI, or more money, as he has in later, better-known movies. But I think this movie is worth watching, and even owning, if you want to see solid early work from a director who has since tackled some of the highest-profile and biggest profit-reaping films in the industry.

In the Outer Zone... you need a friend........2003-07-21

Oh man, where do I start? Most reviews of this movie seem to range from love to hate, with very few between. I think I fall in the 'between' area. Moon 44 was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independance day, The Patriot, and Godzilla. Oh yeah, he also produced and wrote Moon 44. One of the stars in the movie, Dean Devlin, also produced Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla with Emmerich.

The movie starts off by telling us it's the future, and all Earth's resources have been depleted, so companies have taken to space to exploit moons for their mineral resources. Competition for these moons is pretty fierce, as the material recovered from these moons is very valuable, and can make or break a company. One company has seen numerous moons hit, shuttles lost, and their profits gone, so when their last moon is threatened by what appears to a conspirator inside the company, the board of directors send an investigator to determine the truth, played by b-movie veteran Michael Pare'. He goes undercover, as a one of a group of prisoners who have flight experience as pilots are hard to come by. Apparently it's going to be these guys job to protect the moon and the robotic equipment from raiders by flying around in modified helicopters. Since the terrain they will be flying in is difficult, each pilot must work closely with a navigator, who is situated within the station, giving specific directions to the pilot. One wrong move could mean death. The navigators are the typical computer nerdy bunch, and don't mix well with the harden prisoners when they show up. One prisoner decides to rape his navigator in the shower, and though we don't get to see it, I thought it was a pretty bad idea of the prisoner to do such a thing since the navigator would surely want revenge of some sort.

So we have the problems between the navigators, the hard nosed drill instructor busting the prisoner/pilots chops (especially Felix Stone, played by Michael Pare'), and the slimy head of the station, Major Lee, played by Malcolm McDowell, another actor who spends an awful lot of time in b-movie hell. (Check out the IMdB and you'll see what I mean.) The whistleblower, a navigator called Tyler, played by Devlin, gives Stone what he has and together they determine that the mysterious disappearance of the shuttles is really not that they got lost, but were misdirected by someone inside the organization. There's some running around, some scenes that were supposed to build tension, etc., and we start to find out the truth in what's going on, the motive behind the theft of the shuttle. My biggest problem with this movie is that it seemed like too many threads of story line were dangled before us, much more than could be adequately resolved within the 98 minute running time of the movie. The major stuff was resolved, but the movie got bogged down in character development for characters that were not important to the main story. I mean really, who cares why the one navigator spiked some pilot's lunch with drugs? As a result, Malcolm McDowell and Michael Pare' didn't get as many lines or as much screen time as they should have. The effects and sets are decent enough for this kind of movie, although they kept showing us scenes of a giant earthmoving device and I don't know why? To establish something, I guess...and why do all mining bases/station of operations have to be so funky looking in these movies? It's not that they're dirty, but just a lot of metal grated flooring, pipes and what not on the walls and ceiling, and extremely poor lighting. Maybe it's a written rule somewhere.

I think this could have been a better movie had it focused more on the main plot, and not presented all these secondary plots, spending a lot of time dealing with them, and basically going nowhere. And I was disappointed in the pan and scan full screen format. When will they learn? Why not put both formats on the disc, and let the viewer choose? And don't look for any extras, not even a trailer or case insert with chapter stops. Nada, nil, none...seeing as how this director went on to bigger (but not necessarily better) things, I would have thought he would have been interested in providing some insight to us about this movie through a commentary. Oh well...A so so movie with an exceptionally poor release.

Average customer rating:

Stargate AND Moon 44!
Slightly Misinformed...

Stargate (Special Edition) / Moon 44
Starring: Michael Paré , Lisa Eichhorn , Dean Devlin , Brian Thompson , and Malcolm McDowell
Director: Roland Emmerich
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( S ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Special Editions | Fully Loaded DVDs | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B00005NX19
Release Date: 2001-10-23

Customer Reviews:

Stargate AND Moon 44!.......2003-02-06

The tie-in of these 2 movies is the team of Director Roland Emmerich and writer/producer Dean Devlin. Dean actually stars in Moon 44; he's sort of a poor-man's Matthew Broderick.

Moon 44 predates Stargate and is much more low-budget. It is darker and a little bizarre. The premise: send a bunch of fresh-faced boy cyberjockeys to live on a mining colony in space with a bunch of burly violent convicts and team them up to pilot spaceships to defend the colony. That's not a recipe for trouble, oh no. There's even a creepy shower scene.

And people wondered why they paid Jaye Davidson $1 million to do Stargate? Uh huh.

Slightly Misinformed..........2002-02-12

I didn't realize this DVD was two movies, with "Moon 44" a non-Stargate movie. Silly me...I should have read the fine print. I do not understand why these two moves are joined together like this. Probably in that fine print somewhere...;)

Customer Reviews:

Great back-story. So-so main story. .......2006-03-10

I'll Take This "B" Movie Over A Coma Anyday.......2005-09-19

moon 44 "EXCELLENT"!!!!!!!!!.......2005-08-31

Early effort from director of ID4, Stargate, and others..........2004-02-13

In the Outer Zone... you need a friend........2003-07-21

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