For All Mankind (1989)

Sadly Over-hyped

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie is a documentary, a chronicle of about nine NASA missions to the moon from 1968 to 1972, including the near disaster of Apollo 13 ("Houston, we had a problem here."). It is not important that there is not a great focus on any one particular space mission. After all, even if not exactly alike, the trips were similar. But how about those brave men, sitting atop a 300+ foot spaceship longer than the height of the Statue of Liberty . . . waiting for the rocket motors to blast-off . . . a big candle indeed! To make this wonderful movie, director Al Reinert mulled over six million feet of film and taped more than 80 hours of NASA interviews. Editor Susan Korda must have had much work to do.It all began in 1962 with President Kennedy's famous Texas speech. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." We had a supporting array of brilliant engineers at Houston. Our achievement was monumental.The film offers no professional narrative, no texts, and no talking heads. None of those are needed. Instead the story is told by Houston and the astronauts themselves. The footage speaks for itself. And it is beautifully set to music by Brian Eno. An astronaut plays Frank Sinatra's 1964 rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon." How apropos! Later we hear "The eagle has landed." What an experience: walking and hopping on the moon, rock hunting, securing the American flag! One of the astronauts tests Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies using a hammer and a feather. The Italian physicist was right! The film is dedicated to the 14 men and women who died. They include four Russians on two Soyuz missions, and the three astronauts who died in that terrible Apollo I fire in January 1967. Also there were the seven who perished in the Challenger in January 1986.I noticed that the end movie credit of Santo and Johnny Farina's 1959 top instrumental hit reads "Sleepwalking" instead of "Sleep Walk." But the movie version is the cover by Lee DeCarlo (who was also the film's post-production sound supervisor) and also Peter Manning Robinson. Maybe this version was renamed; it certainly does sound like the original Farina tune."For All Mankind" is recommended for everybody!

i enjoyed this 80 minute or so documentary chronicling all of the Apollo missions,including the Landing on the moon.yet it didn't have as much of an impact as i had hoped or expected.it's a well done film in all aspects.it looks great and sounds great,and the musical score is nice.there are some great shots of space and the moon,as well as the Earth from the moon.the clothing style of the guys at Mission Control(with their ill fitting shirts,and bad fashion sense)are amusing,as are the scenes of them smoking.for an 80 minute doc,this actually covers a lot of ground.i just wish it had been longer.for me,For All Mankind is a 7/10

I typically enjoy documentaries about the original moon missions, but I was quite disappointed when I watched "For All Mankind." I have to ask, "where is the documentary aspect?" Most of this film was nothing but slow, boring video shot by the original astronauts with annoying music playing in the background. They don't explain anything, the closest they come to narrating any of this is every five minutes or so, someone makes a short 15 second comment, but that's basically it.I think the History Channel did a much better job with their documentary "Failure Is Not An Option", it was 100 times better than this, simply because they combined the video from the moon missions with good narration and interviews with the original astronauts and mission control staff.In my opinion, "For All Mankind" was nothing more than a collection of the moon astronaut's home videos and it has the quality of a homemade film.

I've been a fan of Brian Eno's work for years, and have cherished the album entitled "Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks." The album is the commissioned soundtrack for this compilation documentary of the NASA Apollo missions. What a harmony of the arts this is. The stark NASA footage coupled with the hauntingly soothing score create a fascinating marriage of techniques and styles. Although the music editor overused certain tracks over others, the subtlety of Eno's music prevents it from becoming repetitive. A pleasure to watch.