Apollo: Missions to the Moon

One of the many fine documentaries on Disney Plus now "Apollo. Mission to the Moon" is one of the few films in this genre that had bit of buzz around it when it was released. Finally seeing it now, I can appreciate what an impressive achievement it is.

Veteran documentary maker Tom Jennings weaves together the story of the Apollo Space programme, NASA's attempts to beat the USSR in completing a manned Lunar expedition. The documentary is done entirely without narration, but by cutting together library footage, recordings made within the NASA buildings and interview from associated broadcasters.

It's really impressive how well that conceit works and how clearly the story is told without the use of narration or direct to camera interviews. There is, perhaps naturally, a lot of focus given to the 11th and 13th missions, given that those are the ones with the best stories. There is a respectful amount of time given to the disaster that befell the crew of Apollo one, who unfortunately were killed on a training exercise. I would say that comes at the expense of a few of the other missions, particularly the later ones that, If I'm honest, I couldn't even have told you what they were for.

There's a lot of films about the Apollo series, there's a lot of them just on Disney plus but in terms of cinematic achievement, few can match this story.