Review of Apollo 13 (1995) by Glenn C — 14 Jun 2012

We've got kids and the history they learn in school is forever shifting and so we are starting to include a lot more educational and historical content in our family movie nights. If they can come away from certain films with a better understanding of events then it's a small victory.

We watched Apollo 13 tonight. Ron Howard's film is fantastic. Factually accurate for the most part it avoids an overload of sentimentality and focuses on the crisis at hand... Three astronauts stranded in space with barely any hope of getting home.

This story is told really well with 3 views of the unfolding incident, they being the astronauts point of view, mission control and their families'. There isn't really any stand-out performances here but rather a single solid collaboration of actors.

Watching Apollo 13 also lead to other questions about life in the 60s and 70s such as fashion, technology and rampant smoking habits (lol). I didn't realise it was a gate-way film... LOL. I love this movie and we might even keep up the interest with the consequent HBO series From Earth To The Moon (produced by Howard & Hanks).

Good stuff.