In The Shadow Of The Moon

October 18, 2007

Rated: PG Runtime: 100 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

In The Shadow Of The Moon “Awe-inspiring” is a phrase that may have weakened due to overuse.

That may have been what inspired THE ONION to envision what their front page would have looked like on July 20, 1969:

HOLY ****! MAN WALKS ON ****ING MOON!

You can dismiss the Apollo program as a Cold War stunt. You can bemoan that we didn’t use it as a stepping stone to Mars. But it remains so incredible, that today some ignorant people believe, or profess to believe, that we never went there at all and it was all a hoax.

Those people might find this documentary instructive.

Of course, there’s been a number of movies depicting the space program; THE RIGHT STUFF, APOLLO 13, the excellent HBO series FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.

But this documentary is told by the guys who really did it. 24 men have left Earth’s orbit and traveled to the Moon. 12 of them walked on the surface. This documentary directed by David Sington features 10 of those 24 men.

This is not like some PBS or Discovery Channel/Learning Channel/History Channel documentary. This is an awe-inspiring experience well worth seeing on the big screen.

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 4 Stars, Alan Bean, Buzz Aldrin, Documentary, Eugine Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, Michael Collins, PG, Theatrical