A Double (Moon)Shot

For All Mankind (1989)

92% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 12 reviews)

Runtime: 80 minutes

Directed by: Al Reinert

Starring: The Apollo Astronauts in archival footage and narration

From: Apollo Associates

As I didn’t have time to watch a movie in the past few days I’ll have to talk about a pair of movies I saw in July right around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. One of them I talked about on my blogs but the other I did not. First, the one I did not, For All Mankind, a movie that, among other places, you can find from Criterion.

It’s a movie where the only dialogue is snippets of audio from archival footage. Interesting idea and for the most part it works. You get to see what a typical Apollo mission was like and you get to see much in the way of incredible footage of what the astronauts saw while they were in space. Working so well with the images was the soundtrack provided by ambient music legend Brian Eno. It matched perfectly with the haunting ethereal images you saw on the screen. Apparently, the movie was made in 1983 but for whatever reason it didn’t come out until 1989; I don’t know why that was the case but at least in ’89 it was the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, so there’s that. If you’re interested in the subject of space flight or our missions to the moon, this is a must-see.

The Wonder of It All (2007)

Runtime: 82 minutes

Directed by: Jeffrey Roth

Starring: The Apollo Astronauts in archival footage and interviews

From: Indican Pictures

To copy and paste from what I wrote on MySpace/Facebook:

“What I did on this day was drop off a relative at the Orlando International Airport and then headed out to the Atlantic coast, as I was like halfway there already by being at the Airport. So, I drove to Cocoa Beach and stayed there for a little bit before heading on over to nearby Merritt Island to see a movie there that’s only playing in that area of Florida. It’s a documentary on the moon landings (and if anyone says that they were staged… I’ll punch you in the nose!) entitled The Wonder of it All. It showed footage of the space program and it was mainly interviews with various former astronauts edited together into a narrative style. While it started to drag near the end, overall it was a very interesting movie about the lives of the astronauts and what they’ve done since walking on the moon. I know it’s a niche thing but I was still surprised that I was only one of four people there. Oh well. I drove back home and like the way to Cocoa Beach, road rage happened. Those people deserved it, at least!”

Yeah, I don’t have too much else to say about it besides the fact that it worked nicely with For All Mankind, and one of these days I’ll watch In the Shadow of the Moon, a very highly acclaimed documentary on the same subject. Once I do I’ll talk about it on here. As for viewing Wonder, it hasn’t come out on DVD yet and it being screened in Merritt Island was totally random. Who knows when it’ll be out for more than a few people to see. Judging by IMDb, not too many people have seen it yet, and that’s unfortunate.

I’ll post something here Monday night.