Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

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

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

sspez While it was great to see and hear anecdotes from the actual team members inside the control rooms - real history - I just felt the whole movie was too light, too casual and missed the chance to go deeper into the Mission Control genesis, development, installation, maintenance, etc... How did the initial systems work? We are told that Chris Craft had a big hand in the software development, but it was glossed over. At one point, they mention that the first few Mercury missions were managed from ground control in Cape Caneveral from inside metal trailers and that simple "gauges" were the instrumentation in front of the controllers. The immediate film clip that follows this comment is a shot of more modern consoles with video screens. Were there no archives available of those earlier control rooms? Odd that a story about precision is delivered with simple misses like that. What about the politics that moved Mission Control from MIT and Kendall Sq in Boston to Houston? (LBJ forced that post Kennedy). What about the companies that provided these key systems and the interplay with how they were used, debugged and improved (or not) over time? Not a waste of time to watch, but left me feeling the filmmakers could have really brought some deeper research to bear.

Dave McClain If you've studied your history, watched the Discovery Channel and seen movies like 1983's "The Right Stuff", 1995's "Apollo 13" or even "Space Camp" (1986), "Armageddon" (1998) or "Gravity" (2013), you may think you know about the U.S. space program. Those films are all excellent (as are many other similar movies), but they only tell part of the story. If you haven't seen a well-made documentary on the subject… you don't know NASA. 2017's "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" (NR, 1:41) fills in some of the gaps in our knowledge and increases our appreciation for the accomplishments of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (especially regarding the missions to the moon) and the men who got us there. What the terrific 2016 Best Picture Oscar nominee "Hidden Figures" did for black female NASA employees, this doc does for the pasty guys with crew cuts whom those ladies supported."Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" starts by establishing its story's historical context. In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by putting Sputnik, the first man-made satellite in human history, into orbit around the earth. The following year, President Eisenhower created NASA and both he and his successors, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, refocused our attention on the space race, but it took about a decade for the U.S. to pass the U.S.S.R. Besides launching the earth's first artificial satellite, the Russians also put a man into space and then into orbit before their American Cold War rivals accomplished those feats. But by 1962, the U.S. had caught up with the Soviets and, encouraged by JFK's famous 1961 message to Congress, had set its sights on getting to the moon before the 60s had ended.After the Project Mercury missions got American astronauts into space and Project Gemini increased the complexity and capabilities of American spacecraft, Project Apollo was created to fulfill President Kennedy's stated goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth". Only, it wouldn't be a "him"; it would be "them", several groups of "them", groups of three men who would risk their lives to get to the moon. And it would only happen after much blood, sweat and tears. NASA was creating a space program from scratch and inventing the necessary processes and procedures as they went along. But they still had doubts as to whether they could even achieve the President's objective.The dangers inherent in a robust space program (and just how much work Apollo had to do) became painfully clear in 1967 when the three astronauts of Apollo 1 were killed in a cabin fire during a prelaunch test. After taking 20 months to re-evaluate every aspect of the Apollo program, progress resumed. As this documentary works its way through the Apollo missions, it pays special and increasing attention to those which made the most history, especially Apollo 8, Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. The Apollo story is told through a combination of interviews with several surviving members of NASA mission control during the Apollo years, a significant amount of archival footage and some modern animation."Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" is a fascinating, well-balanced and entertaining documentary. It's always fun to learn something new and learning about the Apollo story through this film is about as much fun as such a thing gets. The interviews personalize the Apollo mission control experience and director David Fairhead and his team keep the clips short and the editing crisp. It's surprising how much archival footage exists to illustrate the history the film tells us and it's all well-placed throughout the movie. All this is supplemented by terrific computer animation which shows us some of the most important moments in Project Apollo like they've never before appeared in a single feature film. This documentary is so good, I was wishing it were longer than it is. "A-"

jtncsmistad As far as I'm aware there has not been a film produced and dedicated to the genuine unsung heroes of Mission Control who shined so spectacularly during the transcendent era of NASA first landing men on the moon. And my question is.......Why the hell NOT?! Well, the good news is that thanks to British Director and expert Editor David Fairhead now there FINALLY is at last a fitting tribute to the extraordinary pioneers who were so crucially instrumental in rocketing The United States to victory in "The Space Race" of the 1960's and '70's. For we now have the stunning new documentary "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo". And, man, I'm here to tell ya it is worth the wait! Fairhead has done a resolutely masterful job of chronicling the birth and next-to-impossible meteoric emergence of NASA in the wake of the Russians successfully blasting Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit in 1957. Through a riveting series of actual footage and news reports of the period seamlessly interwoven with jaw-dropping outer spacecraft flight recreation and interviews with representatives of the engineering team who integrated peerlessly to transform dreams into unparalleled achievement, Fairhead fashions a narrative that is as rousing and thrilling as it is richly informative and educational.For my money, the highlight of "Mission Control" are the interviews Fairhead conducted and intersperses throughout his remarkable production with the men who made it all happen both in our world as well as in the vast heavens above. The ambitious filmmaker secured riveting and revealing chats with the iconic likes of US Space Program leaders Chris Craft and Gene Kranz together with legendary astronauts Jim Lovell and the late Gene Cernan. And while the remarks and observations of these larger-than-life figures resonate profoundly, it is the words of the lesser known members of this steadfastly committed crew that really struck most poignantly. You see my own dad, Olav Smistad, worked with these gentlemen and knows most of them personally. And while his involvement with the Mission Control unit was cursory during the Gemini Program, his experience as a gifted and talented aerospace engineer and true pro with NASA mirrors exactly the unfaltering can-do sensibility of the exceptional guys featured in the film.Certainly I am bias. Yes, I am resoundingly pro-American Space Program. Sure I believe in the immensely talented and enthusiastic men and now the women (of whom there were none to speak of on the front lines of NASA in it's infancy) of the agency who are accomplishing so much, but who could realize so much more with the backing of their government, which was powerfully and consistently supportive in the formative and solidifying years of the national space exploration initiative. Now if we want to travel into space we have to hitch a ride with Russia.It should NEVER be this way.May "Mission Control: The Heroes of Apollo" uniformly inspire those with whom we have invested our votes, and our collective faith, into to lead this great country in facing head-on such harsh truth with thoughtful and productive comportment. In other words, DO something. And act in a manner that befits, and serves to honor, those humble heroes who were cheered on by citizens both at home and abroad every single step of the way toward and including those awe-inspiring, deeply moving moments when man wondrously walked on the moon. For there are still so many gloriously giant leaps for mankind to negotiate.Now and forever.

joepeartree I had the pleasure of seeing "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" during SXSW Film 2017. I thought the documentary was well constructed, juxtaposing stills and videos from the late 1960s and early 1970s with present-day video interviews of many of the engineers who ran Mission Control at NASA. This is the kind of documentary that could easily be 10 hours, so I can understand the challenges the director faced to determine what to put in and what to leave out from the primary feature.Several of the engineers interviewed in the movie were present on stage after the screening, including John Aaron and Jerry Bostick.The documentary included interviews with Mission Control managers and engineers Dr. Christopher Kraft, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, Jerry Bostick, John Aaron, Gerry Griffin, Ed Fendell, Sy Liebergot, and several others. It also had interviews with astronauts Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell.The movie begins at the dawn of the Space Race with discussions of test pilots and moves quickly to the sense of urgency created when the USSR launched Sputnik and put Yuri Gagarin into space. It covers the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs well through Apollo 13, but then summarizes Apollo 14 through present-day ISS in only a few minutes. While the stories of Apollo 1, Apollo 8, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and certainly Apollo 13 are incredibly engaging, I would have loved to see a bit more time devoted to events after Apollo 13, and a deeper discussion from the interviewees on how they felt as the program wound down and the last few Apollo flights were canceled.Nevertheless, the documentary is really great, and strongly recommended. In a few more years, all the great leaders who made six moon landings and much more at NASA possible will no longer be with us. Think about that as you watch this, and consider supporting continued space exploration.