Saturday, December 7, 2019

"Apollo 11"

 ½ 

As much as the extraordinary, never-before-seen images from the first mission to the moon, Apollo 11 stuns for the way it conveys a the commitment and dedication it took to get there and back. And it's not just the astronauts, technicians and space-flight managers who were committed.

There, on the IMAX screen, is Johnny Carson, watching Apollo 11 lift off on July 16, 1969.  But there, too, are thousands of men, women and children, transfixed. They are dripping in sweat in the hot Florida sun. They are sitting on top of their cars, trying to catch a quick nap on flimsy blankets, but they wouldn't miss this for anything.

The documentary Apollo 11 was made for CNN Films but is best seen and experienced on the giant IMAX screen, and is back in that format for a week during the height of Oscar season. If you missed it the first time around, don't miss it now, because it is a temporary sort of balm to these angry, distrustful times. Here is a way to travel back into time when everyone had one thing they could get behind. And what a thing it was. Seen in IMAX, Apollo 11 manages to convey the enormity and sheer physicality of it all -- how that 300-foot-tall rocket shot into space and how, four days later, a tiny capsule splashed back down and for one moment everyone was proud.

That's a feeling in short supply these days. For 90 minutes Apollo 11 brings it back.




Viewed Dec. 7, 2019 -- AMC Universal CityWalk

1700


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