Best Feature Documentary Oscar Contender?

***This Review of Apollo 11 has a Spoiler Section***

What is an OSP? - 2:39

Cast and Crew - 3:54

Story Inception/Production Profile - 4:35

Specs - 8:24

Expectations/Plot Premise - 12:42

Production Values - 14:08

Script Thoughts - 19:35

Oscar Lens - 20:36

Final Non-spoiler Thoughts/Watch or Not - 22:49

Spoiler Warning Dance Break - 23:52

Immediate Carryovers - 25:27

Bests - 30:35

Did the Astronauts Need Writers? - 36:57

Worsts: Terrifying Bolt Fastening - 38:05

Final Grades - 43:35

Words of Wisdom/Social Media - 46:32

We’ve got several early Oscar contenders this winter. How To Train Your Dragon 3 looks like a Best Animated Feature nom & we just reviewed it in our last MMOW. Captain Marvel may transcend more than 1 category. But if it’s gonna get 1, Best Visual Effects makes a lot of sense. Now we have Apollo 11 taking a strong early lead amongst the Best Documentary Features. Sundance included 4 of the eventual 5 noms in that category, & this was the doc with the most buzz, and boy, do we understand it now. This was one hell of a movie going experience. Here’s our Oscar Sprint Profile of Apollo 11.

The production profile doesn’t last all that long, but we have some important numbers to discuss along the way. There was a 70mm film, previously lost to the public in the NASA vaults. There were 11,000 hours of audio to sort out. Hell, there’s a Rotten Tomato score of a perfect 100% with one of the highest metascores we’ve ever covered. Indeed, the numbers are staggering, and they don’t stop wowing us after the movie starts either.

Our non-spoiler review breaks down the film experience in some of the broad strokes & builds to an Oscar Lens discussion on whether or not it’ll contend at next February’s red carpets. Then we do discuss the movie in more detail in the spoiler section, which actually might be the rare spoiler section that you might want to listen to even if you haven’t seen the film yet. Because, well, you do know what’s gonna happen, and perhaps you’ll just enjoy it more after listening to the details we caught. In any case, we do highly recommend Apollo 11 for both the hardcore space flight enthusiasts & the casual fans alike. This was a historic achievement in cinema, and much like how we viewed last year’s First Man, our review here is a rave.

This is the third OSP in our young 2019 film year as we’ve already covered Captain Marvel & Fighting With My Family. Of course, we’ll have many more to come. But don’t forget to enjoy our 100% Accurate Way Too Early Oscar Predictions series. The first episode profiles all the contending films, and the second shares our picks in all of the big categories.

We’ve also been trying some new formats this year. In fact, we just debuted it in our Captain Marvel preview episode where we guessed the plot! Well, sort of. What we really did was flex our creative muscles and just have some fun telling our own Captain Marvel stories that will hopefully make you smile. So don’t worry about them spoilers. It’s all in fun, and we’ll be doing the same for Jordan Peele’s Us next.

As always, let us know what you think. We’re at MMandOscar on Twitter, and we are on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Gmail. You can subscribe / rate / review / like / share / & listen to us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Tune In, Spotify, and just about wherever you listen to podcasts. When reality sucks, keep watching movies with us. We’re Mike, Mike, & Oscar!