Odyssey (2026) Tribeca 2026

Having the exact wrong name to be released right before the same named Christopher Nolan blockbuster, this is the story of the early days of the NASA space program told from Jim Lovell's point of view told entirely via archival footage. It takes us up to and through the Apollo 13 disaster.

This is a perfectly okay film. There is a not a great deal we haven't seen before (hold that thought), but its still a nice overview of the early days of space flight. The film is blast of nostalgia for those who love the space program.

While the film is perfectly fine for what it is, the film lost me with the disaster of Apollo 1. The film uses footage of the disaster including the imploding capsule door, the screams of the astronauts as they are burning up alive and the footage of their charred bodies laid out. I'm not sure why they decided to make a turn into the graphic. I'm a space kid from the 60's and I've not seen run across images of the bodies before nor the use of the material from the accident without a context. There was no reason to do so, more so since a couple of the writers at the P&I screening didn't quite grasp what they were seeing.

GO LIKE HELL (2023)

 

Portrait of the independent rocket company Firefly over a several year period during which time they struggle to find money, fight off a lawsuit from Virgin and desperately try to get into space. An dependent company not tied to a billionaire the company is run by people working with the promise that when it all comes together they will make money on the backend.

At times the presentation is kind of bland an matter of fact, there are lots of talking heads. At the same time the charming nature of the people on screen and the unending turns of the journey keep us glued to the screen and wanting to see what happens next. By the time the rocket launches we are fully invested and there and the odds are by the end we are cheering and crying with joy. In all honesty it fully earns the tears of joy.

The rating of 8 is splitting the difference. I say that because while the final sequence is the payoff is part of the story it is so much more emotional than the rest of the film that it seems to be from some other film. In no way would it work without what went before, but it’s some how so much better that it over powers the rest of the film. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s just a bit odd.

SPACE THE LONGEST GOODBYE (2024) hits PBS Monday

This is an examination of the effort to find people who can stand the isolation that long trips into space, say to Mars, will require. We watch as the officials at NASA try to sort out potential astronauts who will be able to survive the strain. We also see the candidates who are finally faced with the gulf between their dreams and the realities.

As a space kid who grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and who read everything I could gget my hands on space travel, I found that THE LONGEST GOODBYE opened my eyes. Much like many of the Candidates I found that there was a lot to long travels in space I never considered. As amazed as I am by anyone who gets to leave earth, this film made me consider their achievements to be even more awe inspiring. As much as I would love to go I was forced to consider that maybe I don’t have the right stuff.

This is a killer doc. Not only does it say a great deal about our exploration of space, but it also speaks volumes about the things we hold important. As one astronaut is heard at the start – going into space for an extended period means missing out on things like rain. What will you give up or what are you willing to reduce down to only be available via a screen? I had a lot to ponder.

This is a super film and recommended.

Debuts on PBS's Independent Lens on Monday, May 6th at 10 p.m. ET (check local listings). After, the film be available to stream on the PBS App and also accessible via PBS’s flagship YouTube channel.

Its Quiet In The Twilight (2022) hits VOD Friday

I loved this film.

This is a love sletter to the Voyager program.  The program launched two space probes into deep orbit in 1977. The probes changed the way we see the universe  changing pretty much everything we know with each transmission back to earth. It is a mission no one expected to last so long (which explains why the crew is now is shunted off to an office a distance from the main space agency)

I don't know what to say but this film is magical. Yea I'm a space kid and this stuff is like manna from heaven, but at the same time this story of the probes and the people who have watched over them for almost 5 decades is just good time with great people.  I started the film and was a bit grumpy figuring it was going to be run of the mill and instead I started to smile and fell into its specialness.

What an absolute delight.

Highly recommended.

It's Quieter In The Twilight (2022) SXSW 2022

I loved this film.

This is a love sletter to the Voyager program.  The program launched two space probes into deep orbit in 1977. The probes changed the way we see the universe  changing pretty much everything we know with each transmission back to earth. It is a mission no one expected to last so long (which explains why the crew is now is shunted off to an office a distance from the main space agency)

I don't know what to say but this film is magical. Yea I'm a space kid and this stuff is like manna from heaven, but at the same time this story of the probes and the people who have watched over them for almost 5 decades is just good time with great people.  I started the film and was a bit grumpy figuring it was going to be run of the mill and instead I started to smile and fell into its specialness.

What an absolute delight.

Highly recommended.

Zero Gravity (2021) Dances With Films 2021

In California a teacher and a group of kids from various backgrounds take part in the Zero Robotics competition, The kids will have to code a robot so that it will do a series of tasks. The competition will have them compete other schools across the country. The kicker is that the robots are located on international space station.

Very good documentary about a bunch of kids leaning to love coding and science. This is a really cool little film that transcends a basic idea of a school competition and makes it into something more. Seriously this film made me go wow and I'm not talking about the spectacular space views but the idea that they have to deduce how to move a robot moving in zero gravity. The idea that they are programming something that they probably didn't understand amazed me. 

I know that doesn't sound cool, but trust me it is. 

Also really cool are al the people we meet. I kind of fell in love with everyone on screen.

This film is great fun and recommended a when it plays at Dances With Films or any other festival this fall.

The list of upcoming showings at Dances with Films LA, United Nations Film Festival, Boston and others can be found here

Black Holes: The Edge Of All We Know (2021) its on VOD on March 2

 

A look at efforts to take a picture of a black hole. Along the way we find out that black holes are much more than things that just swallow everything.

This is a solid documentary that will get your brain going. Say what you will, black holes are much more complex than you can imagine, with the discovery that they are actually seeming to radiate random particles out into space. My mind way kind of blown wit some of the recent discoveries.

Moving at a brisk pace the film plays like one of the best Smithsonian or Discovery Channel docs but without the mindless actor recreations that are the current rage. I had a grand time watching this and I kept wondering why aren't there more meaty docs like this coming down th pike.

Great fun as well as highly informative BLACK HOLES is recommended.

Spacewalker (2017) hits home video on January 19

 I am a space kid. I grew up during the heydays of NASA. I lived and breathed everything about the astronauts. I cried when tragedies struck because the guys and girls were my heroes. It is with that in mind you have to realize that when the Iron Curtain went down and I started to read about the Soviet space program my heroes shifted. Yea Neil Armstrong took a ride to the moon but the Soviet astronauts were literally fighting for their lives as things broke and they had to take crazy chances to maybe come home. If I was going into space I wanted the Soviets in my crew.

As such SPACEWALKER was a must see for me. 

The story of the first men to walk in space it is the story of when Pavel Belyayev and Alexey Leonov went into space and and then had it all go to hell. Nothing goes right. How wrong does it go? Consider that the spacewalk is less than an hour into the film and there is still another 80 minutes to the end credits. And trust me even when they get to earth it still isn't over- they are still in a world of trouble.

This is an epic tale that will grab you and pull you along. Its a wild and crazy story that really is the sort of story no one would believe except that it really happened. Wow, just wow.

The bitch of this film hitting home video on Tuesday is that we are not getting the chance to see this on the big screen. I can only imagine how this played in theaters in Russia.

Highly recommended even for non-space kids, this is the first great epic I've seen in 2021

Red Heaven (2020) DOC NYC 2020

 Six people are sent to a remote point in Hawaii in order to live in isolation, simulating the experience of living on Mars for a year. Most contact with the outside world is cut off. They can email and video chat with a 20 minute lag time. While in isolation they were given cameras to record their experiences.

What starts off in an expected way develops into an intriguing examination of what it would really be like to be stuck on another planet for a year. The seriousness of the exercise hits home about 20 minutes into the film when two of the "astronauts" are wandering outside in their suits (they must suit up to go outside as they would on Mars) when one of then realizes that their suit has gone quiet. This means that they are not getting oxygen pumped into the suit from the outside. When efforts to get the motor running again fail they have  then make it back before she suffocates.  Yes she she could have opened her suit and gotten some air, but if she was on Mars that wouldn't be an option. It's a grab you by the throat moment that hooks you makes you want to see how it all goes.

As a space kid of the 1960's, I remember watching the original moon landing, this was manna from heaven. This was a nifty little film that truly put into perspective what traveling to another planet might be like. The only thing that would have been better was if this was an actual report from Mars.

RED HEAVEN is a super film that will make you really ponder what mankind's future might hold.

Recommended.

The Astronaut (2019) Fantasia 2019

Richard Dreyfuss plays  Angus a 75 year old widower who being shuttled off to an old age home. Always wanting to go to space he signs up for a contest to get a seat on the first commercial space flight. However things don't go as he plans as his health and the discovery of a possible problem with the flight complicate things.

Certain to be in the running for various awards Richard Dreyfuss is the reason to see this film. While most certainly a good film, it is Dreyfuss's emotionally charged performance that drives the film. Not only do we feel all his aches and pains but we see deeply into his heart and come to understand the man. Dreyfuss makes us one with Angus, with the result that every emotion we feel, tear we cry and laugh we make is honest and genuine.

I am deliberately not discussing what happens since the film has a great deal going on and if I say the wrong thing it will make it sound like it is something it is not. I say this because much of the film is focused on what happens when we and our parents grow older. What exactly happens to ourselves, our dignity and most importantly our dreams. If I discuss the growing old crap (which is right on and perfect) you will lose sight of the fact that this is really a film about following your dreams where ever they lead you-for however long it takes to achieve them.

I should probably warn you that this is a drama first and not a science fiction film. It is not about the space flight but about getting there. Saying that a space flight happens is not giving anything away because of what is in the photos, trailers and the very title gives it away.

This is also a low budget film make with and for love so don't expect big flashy effects except from the realm of acting

Recommended (and bring tissues)

THE ASTRONAUT played Fantasia earlier this evening. It will open in theaters at the end of July.

Earthrise (2018) Tribeca 2018

Quite possibly the best film I've seen in 2018 is EARTHRISE a film about the Apollo 8 mission around the moon that produced the iconic image of the distant earth rising over the surface of the moon.

A reminiscence of the three astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell about what it was like to travel to the moon, EARTHRISE is the first film I've ever come across that truly made clear what it was like to not only be in space but to go away from earth and look back at the planet from an impossibly far distance. I was moved to tears by the men's simple words about what they saw and experienced.

I am in awe of the achievement of this film. Simply the three men talking while we see film they shot while on their mission, There is, on the face of it nothing special, the film we've seen before and the stories we've heard but something about this film makes it all click. Seeing the world so far away on a big screen while the men told of what they saw I was reduced to raw emotion. For the first time I understood how and why they were changed by their flight.

Whats most amazing is the photographs were secondary. The first priority was getting their and back and while they were there the moon was what they had to shoot not the earth---however when they all saw the earth rise they all knew that was why they had come.

I have no words other than see this film- preferably as bi ah humanly possible when it plays in the HOME SWEET HOME collection of shorts at this year's Tribeca on April 24,25 and 28.

For tickets and more information go here.

The Farthest (2017) Tribeca 2017

The Farthest presents a conundrum for me. On one hand it is everything you want in a documentary-it has all the right people telling you the story of the Voyager space flights in such a way as to make the trip something that you connect to. It is full of mind blowing images and its use of music and sounds make it entertaining as all get out on its own terms. When the film is firing on all cylinders it is quite simply as good as documentary filmmaking gets. On the other hand it has a couple of bumps.

Growing up in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s I was of the right age to eat up the everything that was space related. I went crazy for the Viking Mars probes, the Apollo missions and the space shuttle. I also ate up the Voyager mission and I went crazy as the craft sent back some truly spectacular images. I would drive my parents crazy watching the occasional broadcasts from mission control where pictures were slowly seen forming on the screen (Honey wouldn’t you rather watch paint?). I loved this stuff.

And for the most part The Farthest reignites all of that. Watching the film I was a kid again seeing the universe expand before my eyes. The tiny blurry images of Jupiter or Saturn in a telescope was replaced with these sharp images of truly HUGE planets. All of the bits and pieces of this film are stunning and they made me and they will make you fall in love with space.

The problem for me is the film has some odd bumps which kept me from calling this a perfect film. First the film rambles on for the better part of 20 minutes before we get to the actual mission. The intro isn’t bad but it just kind of goes on. The other problem is that film is kind of uneven in its coverage. Somethings like the construction of the craft seem to be breezed through at speed while other subjects are giving loving treatment. The golden record with the audio recording and pictures encoded on it is something that keeps popping up. Its interesting, but at the same this is supposed to be about the whole trip.

Reservations aside this is a film that any space or science junkie should see.

Fallen Idol:the Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy

Convincing documentary posits that Gagarin was not the first man into space and he was in fact the second, a replacement for Vladimir Ilyushinwho had flown four days earlier but met with technical problems that had him crashing in China. The film also reveals the true story of what happened to Gagarin after he landed and was thrust into the spotlight.

Well presented tale, and one that I can't find any holes in, is really the story of the Soviet Union and it's need to present a picture perfect portrait of its achievements. Its a sad tale of heroes lost (the real first man in space has gotten no credit), of lives thrown away (a friend of Gargarin went up in spaceship he knew was doomed because his superiors insisted they knew best) and murder (Gagarin may have been murdered.) It's a story of hubris and group think and a prime example of how things went so wrong in one of the world's great super powers.

For me, a life long space nut this film is like manna from heaven. Here was a look into what was going on in the other side of the space race. Growing up, and even today there have been stories about what was really going on in USSR, though little was ever documented until now. There was the story about the rocket accident that killed hundreds when a rocket on the launch pad dropped its fuel on the crowd gathered below (it incinerating them all instantly), or the story of a secret military space shot gone wrong where the cosmonaut ended up trapped in orbit unable to ever come home. I had always hear stories, now here was some real proof to back up some of them.

Here the whole second man in space story is carefully laid out and revealed via news reports from the Soviet Union which shifted hour by hour, offcial histories that were changed and now that the Iron Curtain has fallen eye witness accounts. The sad thing is that the heroics of Gagarins' flight and later life actually is a tissue behind which greater heroics are hidden. The real heroes are not the ones front and center, but the ones that were hidden behind Gagarin. Its great that the real heroes at last can be named.

This is a great story that needs to be seen.