For All Mankind

Absolutely fascinating documentary exploring the Apollo missions to land on the moon. Essentially, the film charts what a complete mission was like from the launch (it is pretty clear Ron Howard composed his shots for Apollo 13 based on this footage ) to the landing on the Moon. The film only uses archive footage and audio from all the missions shot by NASA and the astronauts in space and audio interviews with the astronauts are used as a form of narration. But what footage it is!! Of course, an awareness that this is real footage makes this all the more fascinating ( a humorous subtitle reminds us that this was shot on location ). Reinert also has an innate sense of crafting a story through the editing, moving between footage shot at Mission Control and the astronauts from all the missions to tell the story. The film does lose a little momentum once the astronauts land on the moon, but the footage shown is never less than stunning.

I was always fascinated by the space race and the ultimate accomplishments made. I love watching the footage from the flights. Unfortunately this is all out of order in terms of chronology. The flights are mixed - at times footage from one, sound from another. Some isn't even from Apollo programm if I'm not mistaken. The don't show "A" flight to the moon, they show all at once. If you have no knowledge at all you won't even recognize which flight you're on at any given time. There is no info content at all. Worst of all are the overdub soundeffects. Not the radio traffic or the off commentary but things like footsteps and noises of the switches. I don't like that. This isn't supposed to be your typical documentary, I get that. But I wouldn't recommend it to someone who actually seeks knowledge about this period in history.