My Favorite Movies: #11—Apollo 13

11. Apollo 13 (1995) 

Genre: Historical Drama 

Director: Ron Howard 

Writers: William Broyles, Jr. & Al Reinert (screenplay); Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger (book) 

Stars: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan 

Awards: 2 Oscars—Sound, Film Editing

Metacritic score: 77 

IMDB Ranking: n/a

Ron Howard has made a lot of wonderful movies over the years, and I anticipate that my friends who've been keeping the comments section of these movie posts on Facebook so entertaining will engage in a lively debate that includes telling me how wrong I am to pick Apollo 13 as Howard's greatest career achievement (at least so far...let's see Solo in May before passing final judgment). But that's the great fun about writing these lists—the comparisons they generate.

So if I'm going to argue that Apollo 13 is not only Howard's best but worthy of almost cracking the Top Ten on my list, where's my evidence? First of all, it's based on the dramatic true story of the Apollo 13 service module exploding in outer space about 200,000 miles from Earth. That's right, it's not only unbelievable, it really happened. Even more unbelievable, the command module call sign was "Odyssey," a poorly chosen name when you consider it took Odysseus 10 years to make a voyage that should have taken him a few weeks.

The movie is based on the book "Lost Moon," co-written by James Lovell, the commander of the mission, played by Tom Hanks with his expected Oscar-worthy mastery. As an audience, you share in Lovell's anticipation to finally walk on the moon—he was one of the first three humans to orbit the moon on Apollo 8—as well as his disappointment in realizing that dream had been lost forever with the explosion. This sense of loss, coupled with his desire to go home, heightens the drama.

My next reason is the stellar (pun intended) cast: Hanks; his crewmates Bill Paxton (Fred Haise) and Jack Swigart (Kevin Bacon); earthbound savior Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinese), who was scrubbed from the mission for health concerns but helps solve the crew re-entry challenges; wife Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan), a picture of strength in public but a terrified wife in private; and best of all, Houston Space Center flight director Gene Krantz, played by a rock-solid Ed Harris, who gets the best line of the movie—"Failure is not an option!"

In search of authenticity, admitted NASA nerds Howard and Hanks convinced the space agency to let them film scenes on the "Vomit Comet," the weightless training plane that simulates zero-gravity conditions in earth flight. This results in a number of scenes that aren't special effects; the actors and the props are really floating weightless on the screen. While they admittedly pumped up the dramatic nature of their journey home—they didn't really fight with each other; they simply solved each problem as it came up—the filmmakers sought to be as true to the actual events as they could.

Finally, the movie somehow manages to build genuine drama and tension despite the fact that a simple fact check spoils the ending—all three astronauts made it home alive and well. This doesn't detract from the drama of each event: the initial explosion; the shutdown of the command module; the communications blackout as they pass through the moon's dark side; replacing the CO2 filter by literally putting a square peg in a round hole; the manual burn for course correction; and the four-minute communications blackout after re-entry.

In fact, the moment at which you hear Hanks/Lovell's voice come through the crackle of static to announce that they have survived the inferno of re-entry is one of the most joyful moments I've ever witnessed on film. From the first time I saw it in 1995 to this very day, I cry tears of joy every time I watch it. I'm getting a bit verklempt just typing about it, to be honest. Credit also goes to James Horner's magnificent musical score for its dramatic impact.

This is a movie that I've watched again and again throughout the years. A couple of years ago it probably would have been in the top ten just because it was the movie I saw on my first date with my former wife, so now that I'm divorced, that milestone carries a little less weight, but it in no way detracts from my enduring love for this movie or the thrills it still carries to the moon and back.