Review: Riveting 'Apollo 11' takes us back in time with original moon mission footage

Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction, but it certainly can be more dramatically compelling. A documentary on the mission that took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back half a century ago, "Apollo 11" has no talking heads telling us what it all means or modern re-creations like the unemotional Ryan Gosling-starring "First Man." Instead, as directed by Todd Douglas Miller, "Apollo 11" relies on footage shot and audio recorded at the time, and the results, from liftoff to landing to the journey back home, are completely riveting. "Apollo 11" succeeds as well as it does for several reasons, but a key one was the discovery in the National Archives of hours of large-format 65-millimeter color footage covering all aspects of the mission, footage that had never been seen by the public and was subsequently digitized to the highest resolution possible. Also discovered were 11,000 hours of audio recordings from key personnel on the ground as well as the astronauts way out in space. But just having great material does not guarantee a superior film, which is where Miller's skill and experience Miller come in.