APOLLO 13 (1995) *** Film really does a great job of portraying what a team effort space exploration is. The astronauts are out there in space and media glare, but they appear to be.not the least of it, and the end it obviously comes down on their shoulders, but there are an awful lot of people making incredibly important and difficult decisions. Tom Hanks got the lion's share of popular acclaim for making this film such a success, but to me it looks like a lot of people giving outstanding performances. I would say that I think that Ed Harris is best of all but it's very balanced, you can't really complain about singling out any of maybe a dozen performances, singling out at all seems inappropriate, really. That doesn't belie the reality that Ron Howard did a helluva job at the helm: it's an entertaining film, well paced, it looks right feels right sounds right; they even make the science seem intelligible to someone with relatively little scientific background (me). It creates the illusion that the rest of us could understand what was going on, maybe because we could feel it. I remember attending a prayer vigil for the astronauts and the film brings that all back without the need to try and change it all into something else. It's not about philosophy-though that could also be an interesting approach-the film's not even about history as much as being about what happened.
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