For All Mankind

I got Apple TV just to see this show. It is absolutely amazing and the character development is phenomenal. I am so excited for future seasons.

Episode where they start shooting each other on the moon was where it jumped the shark. Apple, you guys messed up. Good luck to the cast and crew. Hope you find work again soon.

Great show that is evidently paid for by big tobacco. It’s a covert cigarette commercial disguised as a show our high school students will watch.

Have you ever bothered to watch this winning documentary? The TV show you are evaluating is fictional. Alternate history novels and shows are, by their nature, not meant to be realistic.

For such a solid start with appropriate accuracy given it’s an alternate reality take, episode 3 is a catastrophic in flight emergency. The almost all-female episode forces today’s social movements into the space race in an awkward, forced, and disingenuous manner. Yes, the space race was dominated by white males. But it was what it was. Trying to shoe horn a group of diverse women astronauts into the story line is like trying get someone to eat one of those fake beef patties and say it’s real beef. It might taste like the real thing but we all know it isn’t. As one of the wives says, they (the newly minted female astronauts) haven’t trained and sacrificed the way the military pilots did, and aren’t capable of what they are. Duh? Naval training for years vs a woman with 750 hours in a DeHavilland Beaver? It’s a disgrace to the men and their families who sacrificed so much to achieve such greatness. But hey Neil Armstrong, some blonde picked by Nixon can fly as well as you in one episode! That really happened right? If you want a show that rewrites history along lines that those born after 1990 might enjoy, sure go for it. But if you are a fan of the true history and reality of the space race you will be pulling your hair out long before the badly recreates CG bounce of one of the females on landing. Apple+ subscription ends today. Hope it works out. Probably will because so few actually know history or respect it. Plenty of opportunities for a female-centric space show. Just don’t hijack the history for your metoo movement. And the female story line was a slog to get though. Maybe you should have tried a couple gay Apollo astronauts. May have boosted the ratings while sinking your credibility further into a deep lunar crater.

Astounding! Astonishing! For your wonderment! If you are into space at all, you’ll marvel at this smorgasbord of eye candy and Tang!

This movie is probably alright if you are less than 10 years old. It constantly misrepresents the footage it's using. For example, we are shown footage of a Gemini re-entry and are told it's an Apollo trans-lunar injection.

So well done. I really got the feeling of what it must have been like. The feelings of distance and loneliness when the Lem separated from from the orbiter was so real. How could the two spacecraft ever possibly dock with each other in the vast loneliness of space? Would they ever meet? No way for rescue if an engine failed or ran out of fuel. Truly a fearful and awesome feeling. Beautiful but lonely in the vast emptiness of our small little planet all alone and vulnerable.

I’ve watched this more times than any other movie. It’s so much more than a documentary. It’s a love letter to exploration. My favorite film of all time.

This review is an excerpt from my book “Killer B’s: The 237 Best Movies On Video You’ve (Probably) Never Seen,” which is available as an ebook on iBooks. If you enjoy this review, there are 236 more like it in the book (plus a whole lot more). Check it out! FOR ALL MANKIND: Producer/director Reinert raided NASA’s massive film vaults and sifted through literally thousands of hours of footage taken during all nine manned missions to the moon, choosing the best shots from each and combining them into a single, seamless composite trip to the moon—the best and most beautiful of all trips. The result is a vicarious voyage: A distilled description combining visual majesty, otherworldly wonder and quiet excitement. The soundtrack (by Brian Eno) enhances the format of the film, allowing anonymous astronauts to give their descriptions without interruption, enhancement or explanation, accompanying a mesmerizing flow of perfect pictures of the earth, the moon, the ships, and our destiny and eventual destination, the stars. Reinert obviously understands the phrase “a sense of wonder”—and no documentary on the space program has ever illustrated the awesome appeal of space travel better than this one. The subtle structure of the film ensures that no distractions come between the ethereality of the actual experience and the viewer’s gentle perception of it, leaving us with the visceral impression that we are ourselves on board, experiencing the awe and exhilaration firsthand. “For All Mankind” is about as close to “being there” as any of us are likely to get—and watching this breathtaking film reminds us what a tragedy that really is.