The movie is a documentary, a chronicle of about nine NASA missions to the moon from 1968 to 1972, including the near disaster of Apollo 13 ("Houston, we had a problem here."). It is not important that there is not a great focus on any one particular space mission. After all, even if not exactly alike, the trips were similar. But how about those brave men, sitting atop a 300+ foot spaceship longer than the height of the Statue of Liberty . . . waiting for the rocket motors to blast-off . . . a big candle indeed! To make this wonderful movie, director Al Reinert mulled over six million feet of film and taped more than 80 hours of NASA interviews. Editor Susan Korda must have had much work to do.It all began in 1962 with President Kennedy's famous Texas speech. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." We had a supporting array of brilliant engineers at Houston. Our achievement was monumental.The film offers no professional narrative, no texts, and no talking heads. None of those are needed. Instead the story is told by Houston and the astronauts themselves. The footage speaks for itself. And it is beautifully set to music by Brian Eno. An astronaut plays Frank Sinatra's 1964 rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon." How apropos! Later we hear "The eagle has landed." What an experience: walking and hopping on the moon, rock hunting, securing the American flag! One of the astronauts tests Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies using a hammer and a feather. The Italian physicist was right! The film is dedicated to the 14 men and women who died. They include four Russians on two Soyuz missions, and the three astronauts who died in that terrible Apollo I fire in January 1967. Also there were the seven who perished in the Challenger in January 1986.I noticed that the end movie credit of Santo and Johnny Farina's 1959 top instrumental hit reads "Sleepwalking" instead of "Sleep Walk." But the movie version is the cover by Lee DeCarlo (who was also the film's post-production sound supervisor) and also Peter Manning Robinson. Maybe this version was renamed; it certainly does sound like the original Farina tune."For All Mankind" is recommended for everybody!

In a project almost more ambitious than the Apollo program itself, Al Reinert distills six million feet of NASA film footage and over 80 hours of taped interviews into a glorious 90- minute flashback to the ultimate achievement of our time: the manned exploration of another world. The film condenses all ten Apollo moon shots into a single flight, using only the genuine sights, sounds, and impressions experienced by the astronauts themselves along the way, from the tension and exhilaration of lift off to the joy (and inconvenience) of zero gravity, and from the loneliness of deep space to the wonder of stepping foot on an alien world. Seeing the footage for the first time on a big screen can be a revelation; it's a thrilling, vicarious journey across a new threshold in human evolution, providing both an argument for the continued human exploration of the cosmos and a timely reminder of how precious life on our own planet is.

This film had some of the most extensive, most well restored Apollo footage I have ever seen.Not having been around in the 1960s to see much of this footage firsthand, I was astounded by some of the videos and insights portrayed by this film. To see the Apollo 11 astronauts goofing around and playing cassette tapes that had been custom made for them by their favorite artists is pretty awesome. This is a must-see for any big Apollo or space buff.Seeing from some other reviews that incorrect footage is mixed to information about different missions doesn't really hurt the picture. Many of the different Apollo launches looked similar. It is hard to tell from the outside what each ship's mission was, so that does not detract from the film.Hopefully we will have more footage from the moon in the near future as we proceed back into outer space to gain more knowledge through exploration like the early explorers that can be heard and seen in this film.

I've always been a fan of space exploration (which incidentally helped fuel my star trek addiction, but that's another story) and this film is certainly very informative.Far be it for me to pontificate over this excellent and informative piece of film, go rent it instead. Or buy it even.Brian Eno's music adds a really effective other worldly atmosphere to this film. (I even went and bought the album! "Apollo" by Brian Eno if anyone's interested).You won't be disappointed.