Rating: 
Summary: Wide Screen Format for this movie is a ......
Review: First of all, this movie is of course awesome. One of my all-time favorites. The Extras on this DVD are great too. The documentary is about 60 minutes long and very entertaining and interesting.Now the disaapointments:
In the details for the DVD it says there is footage from Bill Paxton's 'home movies' shot during astronaut training. I can't find them on the disc at all. The biggest disappointment is the way this movie was converted to WIDE SCREEN format. Wide Screen format, when viewed on a standard TV is supposed to give you more to see, but of course a smaller picture due to the black strips at the top and bottom. With most wide screen formats (like Castaway for instance) I lose about 25% of the screen to the black bars - no big deal, you see more of the original movie. But, with Apollo 13 the wide screen black bars take up literally 50% of my screen. And, to top that off you are NOT actually getting more in the picture. I compared my old Full Screen VHS version side-by-side to the Wide Screen DVD version, and I literally lost half of the view. There was very little gained on the outer edges. Very poor - it looks like they actually took the Full Screen version and covered it up with black bars. Looking back, I still think I would buy this because of the documentary film.... but beware of how much you lose with the Wide Screen format. If I want to watch the movie, I actually use my VHS tape instead of the DVD. 5 STARS for the movie itself, and the Extras - but because of the lost images in wide screen format, i give it 2 stars in the end. Anyone else notice this big in the wide screen format? Is is because this is an older film?
Rating: 
Summary: A must have for any DVD advicate!
Review: I loved the movie when it came out and the DVD experience did not fail to show. It had great insight to the making of the movie, the real life story, and it also lets you listen to the musical soundtrack (won't need to get the CD if you liked the music by JAmes Horner). Plus it had the usual advantages: widescreen and an excellent surround sound soundtrack to make it feel like it did in the movie theatre. This is one that is the tops of the DVD movies it shows that DVDs were invented for films like this one.
Rating:
Summary: I love this movie!
Review: I love this movie so much, it has encouraged me to be an astronaut. I would love to also be an actor in a movie with either Bill Paxton, Tom Hanks, or Kevin Bacon starring in it. I am the one that loves science and am facinated by how they survived, and how Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) could survive a 104 degrees fever. I mean, the highest fever I've ever heard of is 103 degrees, which I have had in some cases. Though I am only 12, I will continue to yearn to be an astronaut or an actor and love scientific movies and so on. But I am not a total whiz kid, you see. I'm just like other "kids" as adults may call us. If you like scientific movies such as "Twister" or "The Perfect Storm", then you'll love Apollo 13, trust me.
Rating:
Summary: ENOUGH ALREADY!
Review: ROCKY V may have tanked at the box-office, but that didn't stop Sylvester Stallone from reviving the Apollo Creed character from the original film and spinning him off into his own franchise. By the time this THIRTEENTH installment was released, the series had run out of gas. The film is probably best remembered for it's tagline, "Yo, Houston! It's me, Rocky..."
Rating: 
Summary: So Close...And Yet So Far
Review: Director Ron Howard's historical drama about the 1970 space mission to the moon, that went horribly wrong is a good film. When a malfunction on board the Apollo 13 space capsule strands its three man crew, they must work together, with the NASA team on Earth, to find a way home. With power running low and time running out, three lives are at stake, as the nation waits and worries...Tom Hanks is Commander Jim Lovell, Bill Paxton is Fred Haise, and Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert, make up the crew, while Gene Krantz (Ed Harris) heads the team on the ground. The cast has great chemistry together. As a proponent of the space program, I found the film very interesting, even beyond the dramaic aspects, right down to the nuts and of how one trains for a space flight. Some Ron Howard films tend to be overly cheesey or heavy handed, not this one, I still find myself getting caught up in it all. The film never gets boring or bogged down and is perfectly paced. The "Collector's Edition" DVD contains a bunch of extras. The highligts of those, for me, are the feature length documentary about the film and the real incident. There's a good commentary track with Howard and an even better one with Commander Lovell himself. The disc also has composer James Horner's complete film score as a "hidden"extra You can access this on the DVD by getting to the main menu, and just letting it play out. It's one of Horner's more popular scores for a film. It's a treat that the powers that be included it. here. The DVD is recommended with a solid [4] star rating
Rating: 
Summary: Im Sick
Review: I cannot believe that this movie meant anything to anyone.It was so fake and the special effects were terrible.Tom Hanks is brilliant but not in this movie.If you watch this it will be wasting 2 and a half hours of your time.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie, Excellent DVD Commentary
Review: There were moments of this movie that seemed so real. I don't think that the awesome story about this Apollo mission was completely revealed to people on earth until the release of this movie. When watching the scene where the astronauts are using the rocket motor from the lunar module to adjust their course back to earth, you really get this ominous sense that they are in this very tiny spacecraft between two very large planetary objects, in an even larger void that is our universe. The commentary from Director Ron Howard offers a great ongoing behind the scenes making of the movie. Part, but not all of the spacecraft scenes that the actors filmed were in a weightless environment, thanks to the NASA plane that astronauts use to prepare for being weightless. There were scenes that I thought had to have been filmed while weightless, but were actually filmed using simple tricks. I have no idea though, how a replica of the lunar and command module were put into that NASA airplane, and how they got actors and a director and cameras working together. Only a dedicated director, crew and actors could have made that possible. The other commentary track of Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 astronaut, and his wife Marilyn is a rarity among DVD commentaries. There are few DVDs of such a monumental true story where real people from the story can relate these events to future generations. If only this medium was available during George Washington's time. Also included is an hour long documentary of the making of the movie, Apollo 13. This is a DVD well worth owning.
Rating: 
Summary: Movie - 3.5 stars; DVD - 3 stars
Review: Unlike "The Right Stuff," the brilliant film on the Mercury space program that focuses more on character profiles and symbolism than factual history, "Apollo 13" is an entertaining space film that can be used by high school and junior high history teachers. This is due to director Ron Howard and his crew's painstaking recreation of the Apollo space program -- from using a weightless environment to borrowing large chunks of mission control transcripts. The recreations are so dead-on that astronauts and mission control members report having forgotten they were on a set, or confusing the digital imitations for the real thing. Where Howard's dazzling special effects and technical accuracy leave off, his cast takes over. Tom Hanks' enthusiasm for the subject matter shows as Commander Jim Lovell. He skillfully portrays both the excitement of going into space and the stoicism with which the astronauts approached their dangerous work. Bill Paxton as Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise, Kevin Bacon as Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert and Kathleen Quinlan as Lovell's wife Marilyn also shine, but it is masters of subtlety Ed Harris as flight director Gene Kranz and Gary Sinise as grounded astronaut Ken Mattingly who steal every scene. They are given ample opportunity to do so, thanks to the wise decision to focus as much on the heroism on the ground from geeks with pocket protectors as the heroism in space from the astronauts. The only problem is the film's occasional ham-handedness, most noticably in its attempts to place the mission in a historical context. Where Hanks, Howard and producer Brian Grazer's miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" (in the segment "1968") deftly underscored the turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this film makes offhand references through the eldest Lovell daughter to the Hippie Movement and the Beatles breaking up, which comes off as crass and afterthought-like. Still, the film is alternately suspenseful and meticulous in most of the right places, and is therefore valuable both as a movie and as a historical record. The DVD was made when studios were only beginning to play with the medium, and while the "Apollo 13" DVD was an early groundbreaker, the awkwardness shows. An hour-long documentary and two commentary tracks -- one from Howard, one from the real-life Jim and Marilyn Lovell -- together provide a glimpse into both the historical facts and the filmmaking tricks (although screenwriters William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert are entirely ignored). But the extras mostly stop there. There is a trailer and production and cast and crew notes, and the menu is a CD for the film score soundtrack, albeit a CD which cannot be paused and in which you can skip FORWARD but not BACKWARDS. Yet the DVD is a far cry from the Special Editions of today. There are no NASA documentaries, for instance, and very little original documentary footage. While it seems possible, perhaps likely, that Universal could eventually release an even more loaded DVD release, the current one is more than adequate for educational and entertainment purposes.
Rating:
Summary: On the edge of your seat
Review: I have a simple rule. If a movie based on actual events, and which you already know the outcome, can still keep you on the edge of your seat, then it is phenomenal. This is the case with Apollo 13. You will be cheering at the end. Wonderful job by Ron Howard, as usual.
Rating:
Summary: Apollo 13 Rocks
Review: I've stood in the training facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center and had a veteran astronaut tell me that this film is very realistic. I really enjoyed the way Ron Howard used the C-130 "vomit comet" aircraft, normally used for weightless training, to simulate the weightless environment astronauts live in. Well done. This movie is a must-see. Also, ... see "Astronauts & Other Exciting Careers in Space," a film we made to take young people through an entire space shuttle mission. We filmed at the Johnson & Kennedy Space Centers and NASA filmed the orbital part of the mission for us.
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