Watch For All Mankind For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I own about a dozen documentaries covering the moon landings, being someone who remembers the endeavour from Apollo 8 onwards (collecting the newspaper clippings and building my plastic Saturn V) and this is easily the most watched in my collection. The atmospheric soundtrack allied with the voice-overs from the actual Apollo astronauts and flight controllers raise this above the others, giving a real insight into how it felt to be creating history. It's a great shame that some reviewers have seen fit to mark down this film because it doesn't do what the majority of the other documentaries do. For All Mankind is one of a kind and all the better for that.

Unlike David Sington with 'In The Shadow Of The Moon' 18 years later, 'For All Mankind' director Al Reinert doesn't address conspiracy theories about faking the moon landings. He doesn't need to, he's just sat through 6 million feet of film from the Apollo and Gemini missions. He has watched President Kennedy's speech about putting a man on the moon in which he makes clear that the technology for doing this has not even been invented yet. He has seen the tragic deaths of the crew of Apollo 1 in a roaring fireball in a test before they even got off the ground. He has seen footage of touchdowns and take-offs from the lunar surface. He has heard hours of detailed communications between astronauts and the ground crews. There is no need to waste screen time in addressing idiots. It reminds me of seeing a protest against Scientology in Edinburgh; to me, Scientology is so ridiculous that to protest against it gives it a weight that it doesn't deserve. Interestingly, Reinert also doesn't waste screen time on most of the things that 'In The Shadow Of The Moon' would take up; the cold war, the fighter pilot backgrounds of the Apollo crews. That film takes a more conventional all-around documentary approach, with close-up talking heads whose names and missions are restated on-screen each and every time they speak. With this film there is none of that, in fact it's often difficult to decipher who is speaking and which particular mission footage is from, or even if the voice and the footage are from the same flight.The different missions are instead merged together in a single sequence, beginning on the launch pad, all the way into orbit, lunar landings, reconnaissance on the surface, take-off and return. Each mission was essentially the same as any other from Apollo 11 onwards, with the exception of Apollo 13 which blew an oxygen leak and had to be abandoned. The drama of that situation is massively underplayed here, there are none of the great sweeping strings moments, we have only highly professional men doing highly specialised jobs... at least until we get out of earth's gravitational field.What follows from this point is the strength of 'For All Mankind'. Everyone has heard about the cold war, beating the Russians, the whole world watching on TV as Neil Armstrong comes down the ladder. Our sense of wonder was in looking at them, their sense of wonder was in looking at what they could see and experience directly. As soon as the gravity departs, these ultimate professionals become children again, spinning torches in zero gravity, bouncing around on the moon singing "tum ti tum ti tum..", playing country music on tape recorders, listening out for college football scores. We even see astronauts messing around so much that they go sprawling on the ground, only to end up scolding each other for getting so dirty.Not telling us exactly what is going on, or who is speaking, or exactly what you are watching can be frustrating, but it allows us a view of events free from the context of politics, nostalgia, even personality at times. Dave Scott of Apollo 15 stands looking upon the Moon's hilly terrain and observes "I realise there's a fundamental truth to our nature... Man must explore". Absinthe minds will enjoy the sense of wonder that comes from seeing people on the surface of another world, far increased over most film representations by being real footage with real people.Even so, there is a little directorial dishonesty, or artistic license depending on how you want to look at it. Scenes from Gemini are inserted to appear like those from Apollo. Kennedy's opening speech has a word dubbed, altered from "for the progress of all people" to "for the progress of all mankind", in order to better suit the purposes of the film. Understandable, perhaps, but why fiddle it? Similarly a memorable audio clip describing how the Moon was perfectly lined up ahead of the space shuttle as it stood on the launch pad is accompanied by a clip showing this. The only problem is that this footage did not exist - it was created for the film by pasting a photo of the Moon over the command module, now in a museum. Again, understandable, and seeing the Moon through that window alongside the description is indeed memorable. but when you find out that it was created and inserted it's a bit of a let down, like finding out that the Ramones legendary live album 'It's Alive' was largely re-recorded in a studio afterwards.What isn't at all a let-down is the Brian Eno soundtrack, whose eerie ethereality keeps you in mind of the dimensions of space as compared to the delicate tin can of the lunar lander modules. The fragility of these vehicles is best summed up by the little windows, which look almost impossibly delicate given that one small breach would mean near-instant death for all on board. Amidst the euphoria and clowning, Eno retains and carries our sense of delicacy and amazement.

This film had some of the most extensive, most well restored Apollo footage I have ever seen.Not having been around in the 1960s to see much of this footage firsthand, I was astounded by some of the videos and insights portrayed by this film. To see the Apollo 11 astronauts goofing around and playing cassette tapes that had been custom made for them by their favorite artists is pretty awesome. This is a must-see for any big Apollo or space buff.Seeing from some other reviews that incorrect footage is mixed to information about different missions doesn't really hurt the picture. Many of the different Apollo launches looked similar. It is hard to tell from the outside what each ship's mission was, so that does not detract from the film.Hopefully we will have more footage from the moon in the near future as we proceed back into outer space to gain more knowledge through exploration like the early explorers that can be heard and seen in this film.

This was effective for this viewer. Usually what that means in cases like this is that it made me cry. The hook is that it reviews its subject through the eyes of the astronauts. I was wary of this. I got involved in the program later, during the beginning of the shuttle era and even then the astronauts were pretty much there only to have been taken there. They were chosen — some of them — for how good they looked on newsprint. The magic of the program and its heroes were a few visionaries and an army of competent engineers. Yet it was effective because we see the story through the eyes of witnesses. There role here is simply as witness, and if you were alive during this time, you will be impressed at how it affects you.There were all sorts of paths that could have been followed in this. The quest of man to explore; the mysteries of the unknown; the vast game being played by two enemies to demonstrate superiority of ideology; the hidden weapons programs.They cover all these slightly except that last, and that's excusable because these witnesses saw none of that. But the story that dominates is the Kennedy one. Its hard to imagine today, but we loved our president and he deserved it. He was intelligent and articulate. His advisers came off not as louts or bullies, but men (and a few women) smart enough for difficult times. He was the Peace Corps president. Kennedy promised to go to the moon and return without consulting anyone at NASA, and riding on the crest of a national enthusiasm for science and hardware. The nation really was engaged. And then he was killed, and with our rising self-doubt (Vietnam, race) we decided that as a people we owed it to him, or what he stood for. So when it happened, and the world watched, re affirmed the man and what he stood for. It was a good feeling, not pride as much as wonder about who we discovered ourselves to be.This will evoke that same feeling again, the original tears, followed by tears of disappointment at the massive collapse of esteem which followed. A serious of botched opportunities to be worthy of the accomplishment.Its an effective documentary in that regard, all the more so since everything was designed to be photographed, and was. If you really want to learn of this program, you need to go elsewhere, But this delivers on the promise.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.