Apollo 11 (2019, Todd Douglas Miller) (Patreon)

65/100

Suspect I screwed up by not driving down to L.A. and seeing this on an IMAX screen, even though I tend to be skeptical about what I think of as "fake IMAX." On my TV set, the film's newly discovered 65mm footage wasn't so much breathtaking or mindblowing as it was eyecatching, in the sense that we don't generally expect such visual clarity from e.g. shots of crowds observing the Saturn V launch (which were primarily captured by cheap news cameras). For All Mankind got there first in most other respects, though it's valuable to have a record that sticks entirely to Apollo 11 rather than creating a pseudo-narrative from a bunch of separate NASA missions; both films are doggedly present-tense and largely context-free, which is just how I like my historical documentaries. Miller does a fine job (with assistance from composer Matt Morton) of creating tension despite our foreknowledge that nothing significant will go wrong; I had to read up afterward to find out what the deal was with the little warning light that intermittently appears alongside the fuel/altitude graphic during the lunar descent (answer: the guidance computer was having trouble executing all of its tasks in real time, due to a radar switch being in the wrong position), but it's enough just to know that Armstrong was experiencing real stress in the final seconds before touchdown (elevating his heart rate to 156 bpm, as we learn via chatter). Nothing to be done about the absence of any hi-def video footage from the moon's surface, but a selection of still photos fills that hole reasonably well, even if enthusiasts will have seen them many times before. I confess that I teared up during the initial panoramic view of Tranquility Base (which I assume was digitally stitched together from stills, though it looks seamless), and spent much of the film wishing I had any memory at all of watching the mission unfold on TV (which I surely did, but at the age of 15 months; my family does have a fun picture of baby me holding up Jul 21st's MAN WALKS ON MOON front page). But I can't say that any of it felt revelatory on the small screen, and I regret not making more of an effort to have the maximalist experience.