Apollo 10½
You wouldn’t expect the Moon Landing to provide us with another film, another fictional take on a pivotal point in scientific discovery. But Richard Linklater , who specialises in nostalgic portraits such as Boy —has created an animated/rotoscoped story about a boy who lives in Suburban Texas. His father works for NASA but the boy bemoans that Dad isn’t in a “cool” role like for instance an Astronaut. The film is a beautiful evocation of an event from the perspective of a child. Stan lives with his brothers and sisters, and his life is a mixture of school and playing: doing all the childhood things: enjoying the relative freedom with games, and of course getting into trouble and suffering the consequences. Jack Black provides the voice-over as adult Stan tells the story of life as the Apollo mission launches and the astronauts walk on the moon. The title refers to the bizarre conceit of the film which is that NASA have accidentally made a Lunar Lander at the wrong scale and they nee...