Genre Grandeur – Apollo 13 (1995) – Encore Review 4 – MovieRob

For this month’s next review for Genre Grandeur – Non-Winning Oscar Best Picture Nominees, here’s a review of Apollo 13 (1995) by me.

Next month’s genre has been chosen by me and since I’ll be debuting season 3 of my Podcast – MovieRob Minute on July 4th where we will look at Die Hard (1988) one minute at a time, I decided to link it to this months GG, so we will be reviewing our favorite Die Hard Doppelganger Movie.

Thanks again to Matthew Simpson of Awesome Friday for choosing this month’s genre.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Jun by sending them to DieHardDoppelganger@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see what I thought of this movie:

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“We’ve never lost an American in space, we’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.” – Gene Kranz

Number of Times Seen – Too many to count (Theater in 1995, DVD, 4 Feb 2002, 15 Nov 2013, 29 Sep 2014, 14 Dec 2017, 15 Jan 2020 and 30 May 2022)

Link to original review – Here, Here, Here and Here

Brief Synopsis – On the 3rd mission to the moon, something goes wrong and instead of trying to explore a new world, NASA must find a way to save the 3 crew members.

My Take on it – For my choices this month, I decided to go with 3 movies that were nominated for Best Picture and IMHO, they all should have won the award since they are much better than the films that ended taking home gold that year.

For my first choice, I went with Ron Howard’s amazing trip to the moon and back from 1995; Apollo 13 (1995).

The story is set up so well and since the characters and situation are real, it comes across so realistic the whole way thru.

They took their time with the story and manage to make a story about a failure turn into such a success and even after nearly 30 years, the story still resonates, no matter how often one watches it.

Tom Hanks is superb in the lead and with this role, he manged to get three consecutive Oscar nominations for Bets Actor.

He won that award during the two previous years and it was doubtful that he would get a Hat-trick, but he once again brought forth an Oscar caliber performance in an Oscar caliber film.

The supporting cast is also amazing with Gary Sinese, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlin, Bill Paxton and a whole slew of other talented actors taking on the roles of these real people who manages to not only save the space program in 1971, but also the lives of three brave astronauts on their way to history.

The film is filled with a patriot feel the whole way through and that enhances the story and the actions as it transpires.

James Horner wrote an exquisite score for this film and remains among his very best.

I’m still a bit shocked that Mel Gibson was able to win Best Picture that year for Braveheart (1995); which I might add is also a great film, but this one is so much better and more inspiring!

Highly Highly Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Gene Kranz gives a list of instructions to his team at Mission Control, and finishes by saying, “Failure is not an option!” Gene Kranz didn’t actually say that during the Apollo 13 mission, but he liked the line. It became the title of his 2000 autobiography. (From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy (10/10) (no change from original review)