Kevin Bacon

Apollo 13

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Apollo 13
  • IMDb: link

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Re-released (for the first time in IMAX) to celebrate the film’s 30th Anniversary, director Ron Howard‘s 1995 film based on the real events surrounding the flight of NASA’s Apollo 13 is arguably his best (I’d put it neck-and-neck with the underrated Frost/Nixon.) Casting Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon as the three astronauts whose mission to the moon goes horribly wrong and Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Chris Ellis as those in Mission Control who help bring them home, Apollo 13 is a tense drama where knowing beforehand the ending somehow (despite all logic) doesn’t hurt it’s climactic final act.

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Frost/Nixon

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Frost/Nixon
  • IMDB: link

“What made you exceptional, they said, was that you were a person who had achieved great fame without possessing any discernible quality.”

Sometimes it takes David to bring down Goliath.  David Frost (Michael Sheen) was a likable talk-show host who mortgaged his future and career with an interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella).  Nixon, in need of money and a change in his public perception, agreed to the interview with the man whom his aide (Kevin Bacon) stated simply “isn’t in your league.”

After an intial montage summing up the Watergate scandal, the film follows Frost on his journey to land, finance, and prepare for the interviews which would almost break him, all while the rest of the world looked on and laughed.

Sheen (The Queen, Music Within) once again gives a great performance on which the film rests.  Over the last two years he’s become one of my favorite actors working today.

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