Never heard of this movie before, kind of glad I haven't.

On a side note:
Film Brain, You might want to buy more booze. You're going to need it when you watch Eragon.

You right, there is no sound in space, but so few science fiction movies and tv shows gets it right. The only ones I can remember is Firefly/Serenity and Gun X Sword.

I think you should only be ashamed if in deed you say, "first". For that matter, Second!!

that new star trek movie kept sound out of space(for the most part)

It's a callback to the very first episode, Pluto Nash.

2001, the most accurate representation of what it's like to be in space

Yet it was made before anyone landed on the moon. Awesome.

The most inaccurate representation after the 1950s? I guess Hanna-Barbera. I'm sure there were some scenes of people talking and breathing in space, a good example being Space Ghost.

2001. how do you forget that?!

Well, some other sci-fi at least reference the amount of noise, as unscientific as it often is.

In the...Star Wars extended universe, I think? I THINK that's where I heard the apparent lasers and explosions are of a mix of gasses in enough quantity to temporarily emulate the stimulated air that is, in a manner of speaking, sound.

In the popular Science-Fiction video game setting "Mass Effect", a science fiction known for relatively solid science, ship computers automatically fill in sound for surrounding space, for otherwise the eerie silence of everything from weapons to explosions can lead to mental unrest, stress or disorientation. (Well, I THINK it was Mass Effect...bah, my memory is terrible for these things!)

I LOVE YOU FILM BRAIN!! :D
Also where are you on the whole tea controversy that Nostalgia chick started in her shatner/picard episode by having milk in her earl grey tea? Seems a lot of people took offense to her putting milk in the tea, while others said tea is a pure personal experience, and she could do whatever she wants :)

Wow, Ronold Emmerich is starting to become quite the regular here on TGWTG.com. Will we see a review The Day After Tommorow in the future perhaps?
Now as for the ending, I understand that you want to try out new things, but that faux drunk bit just came across as a bit too forced, especially when contrasted with your more down to earth rewiewing style. However, other then that minor issue, you did an fantastic job with the review :)

P.S. As for me, I take my tea either black, or with just the very tinist bit of milk and sugar(or honey.) It depends really on the situation or my mood.

If I'm drinking green tea, I put in either lemon juice or lime juice. If I'm drinking Earl Grey, I'll just put in sugar. If I'm drinking chai, my favourite, I put in a lot of sugar. Echinacea tea I sometimes drink with honey, because I drink it when I'm sick.

By the way, I'm American, so I guess what I just said is meaningless.

If you understood why he left it out, why did you leave in "You sicken me"?

extra dry vermouth? ewww... =P

Was the part at 5:15 "a new life awaits you on the off world colonies" really from the film or did you cut that from Blade runner. The board room was distracting as it does resemble an extension of Rick Deckard's room. But there were a lot of movies resembling Alien and Blade Runner at the tail of the 80s/early 90s. At least the rip off was period correct. The unoriginal visual style seems to be at least consistent throughout. Prior to this I did not know that Roland Emmerich was a lefty. Overall it does seem to be better than 10 000 BC. I think I'll might even rent it for the weekend to watch it for myself.

Great detailed review as always Film Brain.

PS: how about switching to coffee instead :)

The "off-world colonies" audio was from Blade Runner and put over Moon 44 footage.

And it really matched.

The only Ronold Emmerich films I enjoy watching are ID4, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. I've slao seen "Godzilla," but as I grew up, I realized how stupid it is.

2:03- (Echo)OF COURSE!!!!!

13:09- And THAT'S one of the reasons why I don't wanna break the law.

19:03- Movie, you are a MOVIE, not an episode of Star Trek.

After seeing this review, I can say that "Moon 44" is the "Skyline" of 1990.

Another movie I noticed they were ripping off is the Dirty Dozen. Using convicts to do the military's dirty work. Wow Emmerich is a bad director.

Don't pretend to be drunk, it massively detracts from any attempted stabs at humor.

I kind of have to agree. No offence, Film Brain, you're just not a convincing drunk. At least I don't think so. Might be the fact that I live with an actual alcoholic so I'm harder to fool.

I know how stupid his movies can be, but this just looks awful. I can let stupidity to if the action makes up for it (eg: Independence Day in my opinion), but this just looks painful to si through.

Oh and Film Brain, I would suggest staying away from the drunk takes for now. Not to be insulting, it is VERY hard to get right. With more practice, it could be good, but right now it was a little weak. I'm not trying to be mean, it is hard to get it right.

Oh an that opening has to be the most British thing ever on this site :p

"This movie is going to be torture! I need a stiff cup of tea." Ah, classic British humor.

By the way, I've heard from several sources that, percentage-wise, England, as well as Germany, has more alcoholics than Ireland. Yet Ireland, for some reason, does have a lot of pubs.

Probably because the Irish have a greater tolerance for alcohol

Quite a great review, never seen the movie before, by the way Awesome cup and shirt :)

Yeah! Where did you get that cup, Mathew? I'll have to look for it next time I go to Orlando.

Nice review, but the drunk-acting at the end kinda ruins it. It really is a lazy form of humor, like "look at me, isnt looking drunk funny"... it can be in certain situations, usually someone you know IRL messed up and acting crazy, but some guy on the internet pretending just looks corny. And yes, Nostalgia Critic did it too and that sucked.

I agree with you, Flaregun. I don't know how convincing it was with the Critic, but it was funny.

Deckard's apartment is based on Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House in LA. Part of Blade Runner was filmed there but Deckard's apartment was a studio set. The Ennis House has been in alot of different films such as The House on Haunted Hill and The Rocketeer.

As for Moon 44, I have to ask why did they need pilots for? They could have used either robots or have the nerds R/C the copters from the base. also why helicopters insead of spacefighters?

"Poisonous space fungus" came out of the left field and actually made me laugh out loud.

This movie has a small cult following. I remember listening to a movie podcast that had Brad Jones as a guest and the host telling him that he really should watch Moon 44 and that it is a good movie.

I think Film Brain is going a bit hard on something that is basically "Space-ploitation" and was filmed on virtually no budget by American and even British standards.

Considering that Emmerich was pretty much still a unexperienced film studentat the time when he made this, in a country that has no film industry worth mentioning, the result isn't that bad.

And c'mon, it is a movie about convicts fighting robots with attack helicopters in a canion network in outer space. At least that isn't something you see all the time, is it? Also I found the conflict between the convicts and the computer nerds to be interesting.

If you want to rant about a science fiction movie that looks like Alien and rips of old ideas (in this case "High Noon"), why not review "Outland" with Sean Connery?

PS: Berating a science fiction movie for starting of with a shot of a space ship is like complaining about a thriller or crime flick that starts with a helicopter shot of a city skyline. This is rather nitpicky, isn't it?

It's more that shot of it approaching the moon is very reminiscent of Alien and Aliens.

That is why I brought up that example. All those skyline shots look the same to me, just as all those horror movies that start with a helicopter shot of a car driving on a road through a forest.

I like your reviews, so don't think I want to start a fight with you or anything like that, I just think you are a bit hard on this one.

You hold to the standards of a big budged Hollywood movie what is basically an independent flick on a shoestring budged made by a few young enthusiasts from the German hinterland.

The fact that it is easy to forget that when watching it says something positive about this film, I'd say.

The budget of less than 3 Million Dollars is a lot by German standards, but if you consider that the 11 Millions ALIEN cost in 1979 would have been 20 Millions in 1990 when Moon 44 was made (meaning ALIENS was a cheap movie with a smaller cast but still had 6.7 times the budget of Moon 44) and if you also consider that most of those 3 Millions went into paying all those American actors and McDowell, you have to cut them some slack.

And about the set design: Yes, it looks a lot like ALIEN and Blade Runner, but what would you have done with it if you would have been hired to design a set for a dark science fiction movie about a bleak dystopian future?
There isn't that much you can do with that, I think.
Sure, they could have been bold and make it look all shiny and bright and colorful and go for the 'euphemistic', contrasting design, but it is questionable whether the audience would have appreciated that and whether that would have felt realistic in a movie about an ore mining station on a forsaken moon.

Also, like I already said, I don't think the movie is THAT unoriginal. Helicopters with convicts in them flying through moon canyons, co-piloted by young computer nerds....

Doesn't sound like a carbon copy of anything else I know.


Also you could argue that ALIEN borrowed a lot from "Dark Star" or "Silent Running".
Haven't seen both of them in a long time, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them started with a shot of the space ship slowly moving through space.
Same goes for "The Black Hole". That came out in the same year as ALIEN, so I don't say they stole from it, but if you look at the feel and the dark aesthetics of it, you see that ALIEN can't really claim an intellectual monopoly on dark science fiction set designs.

We're not fighting. We're having some heated debate and there's nothing wrong with that. :)

I don't think there's any denying the fact that Alien and its sequel were both hugely popular and influential films. I think this can be seen by the way emulates those two in set design. I know that can't be attributed this film alone, but it makes it much less interesting visually for everything to be blacks and greys. I think the colour saturation on my DVD copy may be off, but even still, it doesn't help a dull film when it looks drab and uninviting. I know they're on a hot, claustrophobic mining base, but that's not an excuse for being visually appealing.

I know they were on a tight budget, but the constrants really showed. The film has very few action sequences and often the footage is re-used several times. I think if this had a bigger budget, it would be better and the effects are decent given such limitations, but it's another thing that brings the film down. They spend most of the film in training and not much is really happening - it's only in the final 30 minutes do things finally start becoming exciting, but that's simply too late, in my opinion.

I agree, the premise is very original, but the execution is full of cliches and characters from stock. The prison rape and so forth are all genre conventions and there's frankly too many of them. Many of the faults in this movie can be laid at the feet of a very uninteresting script.

It's fun to see some intelligent and respectful discussion on this site. :)

By the way, nice review FB (never saw that movie, though... the premise seems original but the visual more or less bleak... :)

Remember, when you don't know whom the villain is, always accuse McDowell !!!

Often the most reasonable explanation as to why they can hear sound is that the weapon fire, being hit by stuff would cause sound throughout the ship especially if the weapons were very powerfull or big.

One science ficition novel I read actually had one of the characters mention that not having sounds be heard in a space battle made the crews of the ships uneasy since it was so unnatural not to hear the sounds of battle or any sounds associated with what was going on their end. So the solution to this was that when the weapons were fired, impacted on an enemy ship the computer on the ship would play the apporiate sounds so the crew were more in tune with the battle instead of potentialy being disoriented by the lack of sound.

tootired: In one of the Starwars novels it was mentioned that
every ship is equipped with a system that takes information from the sensors (like detected explosions) and transforms them into sounds from a sound library. (I presume that the sound is 3D, so if an explosion is behind the ship, the pilot hears it behind himher). I don't remember if it was only for fighters or also for capital ships, though.

Midichlorians did it. Any bullshit explanation they shoehorn in just seems forced.

The reason there is sound in space in most movies is to make things more audibly exciting. It just gets stupid in movies that play that sound from within a ship can be picked up by another.

englerp said that the ships in Star Wars had epuipment that sensed explosions and simulated sounds for the crews to hear. Midi-clorians (am I spelling that right?) had nothing to do with it, Dorkness!

Con Air in space

Heh, yeah. Kind of.

This is a good movie review. I have to admit it, that protagonist really was a bad undercover guy. He just stuck out like a sore thumb.

Also, doesn't booze make you sleepy rather than keep you awake? I recommend for the next review either energy drinks or coffee.

Well, actually, from what I've heard, booze makes unpleasant things more tolerable, the same way it makes ugly women seem more attractive. Also, tea with caffeine, which was Mathew's first choice, can keep you awake.

If I hear one more guy complaining that there's no sound in outer space I'll rip his eyes out. Guess why there's never gonna be a movie that's realistic in that regard: BECAUSE I'D BE F'ING BORING!

Well, yeah. It would be kind of boring. I guess that's one reason why classical music was put in 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Would have been more entertaining if you'd been actually drunk. Sorry, but pretending didn't really work for the Nostalgia Critic, and it didn't really work here, imho. Thanks for trying something new, though.

Of course, it's hard to be genuinely funny while actually drunk, and it wouldn't really go well with the snarky tone of the series. Maybe if we got a bonus series...? "Drunk Brain's Film Reviews." It could be a bit of a Bum ripoff. Anyway, I'm getting carried away, probably because I'm drunk myself at the moment.

Someone smarter (and infinitely better at acting than I could ever be) put it pretty well, I think: "Acting like you're drunk is best done by trying to act like you're sober." Unless you're blacked out, I don't think most people behave like Film Brain or the Nostalgia Critic did (although, IIRC, the NC was chugging iced tea--I mean bourbon).

Anyway, it was a nice review, nonetheless, Matthew. Hopefully, if you try something with drinking in the future, it'll work out better--it's just not easy to pull off, especially in a one-man show.

I cannot believe I've actually seen this movie on TV. I didn't know from the title, but the hammy sergeant, the deadpan protagonist and the bum rape reminded me of something.

It is indeed a very boring, very annoying, disgusting, uninspired movie. Pilfered or not, the movie has decent visuals, but the plot is a giant pile of garbage.

2:24 - Oh! That's terrible! That's a Terrible joke! I love it!

18:28: Well, It's admirable that you're honest about it. ;P

End Credits: I think you've had your films used board swapped out with another ep there. Hudson Hawk? Superman? Not seeing any influences there...

Anyways, Great vid FB. :)

Talk about ripping off Ridley Scott. This movie didn't have anything orginal in it.

You should check our Emmerich's original lame-o space opera, THE NOAH'S ARK PRINCIPLE.

Ah, the late 80's-early 90's Ridley Scott inspired "future": dark, ugly, claustrophobic, a bit grimy, but exceedingly well ventilated, at least.

By this time there's really no need for me to repeat it, I'm sure Film Brain has gotten the message, but yeah, the fake drunk thing really wasn't working for him. It came across as him desperately (but unnecessarily) grasping for some sort of gimmick or hook for this review, and a rather over-used one at that.

Still, this review taught me two very valuable things: 1)Never rape your navigator, and 2)The line separating Roland Emmerich and Uwe Bol is even thinner than I'd ever imagined.

I'm surprised you didn't make a joke about Bill Sikes

my favorite joke through the entire review is "thats why you don't rape your navigator!" epic in its randomness factor!

*Fan girl squeal.*

Excuse me there for a second, I do that every time I see Malcolm Mcdowell :3

He is in my favorite movie of all time after all XD

And what's funny is I don't have anything against Emmerich. I've only seen Independence Day and 2012 But I like both even with the plot holes.

Especially 2012.

holy shit. i think that tea made film brain time travel!

Why?

Ah. The Disney children's classic: "Rape of the Navigator".


...


Or am I thinking of something else?

No no, that wasn't disney, it was pixar!