25 May 2012

Under-powered rocket picture...

Half plane, half rocket, the North American X-15 took test pilots to the edge of space for the first time, bridging the gap between air and space flight. This movie showcases the efforts of NASA and the X-15 group to get the experimental rocketplane in the air.Fans of the X-15 will be in heaven, as they are treated to a ton of footage of the X-15 in testing, accidents, and actual flight. But sadly, for the rest of us, the movie is a gigantic bore. The X-15 itself is the star of the movie, the humans being incidental, more or less cardboard cut-outs. The narration of Jimmy Stewart to limited to the opening and closing of the picture, while Mary Tyler Moore and the other officers' wives inexplicably vanish from the last quarter of the picture. Charles Bronson and the other leads are really pretty good, but despite their best efforts, it's really hard to care about them or the success of their plane. The film is strangely lacking in real emotional content. What emotion there is is contrived and has a forced, "by-the-numbers" quality. Without any real human drama, it almost feels as if the movie had been put together by a computer. As for the actual X-15 footage, it's hard even to get into that because almost all of the flight scenes are "stretched" to fit the widescreen format. As a result, all of the jets are twice as long and half as tall as they ought to look. Frankly, it's distracting, and so maybe the director should have opted for a smaller aspect ratio during filming so that the other footage would better match the X-15 footage.Basically, a toy model of a rocket would soar higher than this picture does... and that's without lighting the engines!

JVSanders

25 May 2012

Good Space Race Nostalgia

Baby Boomers like me often wonder why manned space exploration seems sofar behind the expectations of the 1960's. Instead of seeing humanswalk on Mars, we're left with an all-but-useless space station servicedby 40-year-old Russian capsules and dangerously obsolescent Americanshuttles. X-15 offers a glimpse of how things might have turned out. It's hard tobelieve there actually was an alternative to such dead-ends programs asProject Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle. The legendary rocketeerWerner Von Braun thought that America should enter space in stages:i.e., build a reusable orbiter, construct a large, permanent spacestation, and then use that platform to construct inexpensive, reusablevehicles for further exploration. Unfortunately, President JohnKennedy's Race to the Moon made such a logical course of actionimpossible. X-15 shows, in part, how the U.S. Air Force wanted tofulfill Von Braun's vision. The film is, for the most part, historically and technologicallyaccurate. Few remember how exciting the X-15 rocket plane was as itleft Earth's atmosphere years before the "tin cans" of Project Mercury.Despite negative claims from NASA (which coveted the millions of spaceresearch dollars going to the Air Force) a follow-up of the X-15, theX-20 Dyna Soar, might have orbited the Earth by the mid-1960's.Interestingly, the film includes cameo appearances of actual network TVcorrespondents who were convinced the X-15 would help America establisha permanent presence in space. A combination of factors: the urgency ofKennedy's race to the moon; the economic demands of the Viet Nam War;and reasonable fears of militarizing space killed off the Air Force'smore-logical approach to earth orbit.The film's dramatic climax, which depicts an X-15 actually orbiting theEarth, is a clear case of cinematic license. (The real X-15 was capableof sub-orbital flights only.) Nevertheless, a larger, two-man version,the X-15B, was designed by North American Rockwell, and there are manythat still believe it could have achieved low earth orbit.It's clear that director Richard Donner was given unprecedented accessto the Air Force's facilities at Edwards Air Force Base/Dryden ResearchCenter. The battle for funding with NASA was a make-or-break challenge,and the USAF clearly recognized the value of the mass media, and ofproviding a heroic and practical image of its X-15 program to Americanfilmgoers. Although the film X-15 might be criticized on a number ofartistic levels, it nevertheless stands as a valuable bit ofearly-1960's nostalgia that offers a rare glimpse into a forgottenchapter of space exploration.

23 May 2012

Fast craft - slow acting !

X-15 is very much a creature of its time.With narration by James Stewart and the semi-documentary approach it is embedded in the cold war era.The stock footage of the X-15 flights is stunning and the speed of the approach and landings remind you of how this craft paved the way for the space shuttle.If only the acting could have had a fraction of the speed of the X-15.Charles Bronson plods through the film - one can also imagine him breathing a sign of relief when his character no longer takes part in the procedings.Mary-Tyler-Moore is used for decoration purposes only, and none of the characters seem to exist beyond their script outlines.The film is one for people who will only watch it for the X-15.My son as every summed it up as:Many people in crew cuts and short sleeve shirts saying `Roger' to each other !

22 May 2012

This movie isnt as bad as some of its previous reviews

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) I thought this movie was pretty good. You have to realize the time this movie was made as far as special FX go. I've seen far worse movies than this made in the past couple years. I was only an infant when this came out so I didnt see this in the movies.Just give this movie a chance and take it for what it's meant for---to entertain-it's just a movie! If people want to complain about movies , complain about the price of the ones coming out now and how lousy they are! Why do you think they come out on DVD so quickly? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......................

20 May 2012

Slow suicide....

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) What a piece of garbage...Amazon should immediately refund everyone's money and then bring legal action againest whomever is resposible for this abomination of a DVD. Did no one attempt to watch this prior to it's release? Probably did and were promptly bored to death....Lynn Stubblefield, Nashville, TN...btw, one star because there is no way to leave them all blank...

20 May 2012

X-15- The wrong stuff

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) I won't add to all the complaints/ explanations about the stretched out footage. Shame on MGM for not fixing this. I have a VHS copy I recorded off of TNT nearly 20 years ago- I'll just watch that version until somebody decides to fix something.Sadly, the actual aerial footage, now stretched like taffy, is the main selling point of the movie and the best reason for watching this "semi-documentary" (only the names and all the historical facts have been changed to protect the innocent). The subplot about the test pilots and the women who love them is laughable. Mary Tyler Moore looks like she just walked off the set of "Dick Van Dyke"- she even dresses the same, even though you never saw Dick shove her down on the sofa, fall on top of her and start kissing her, as in this movie, when she tries to renew her engagement to one of the pilots (Guess Dick didn't have the "Right Stuff"). I think the son of one of the pilots is the same kid who played "Chip" in "My Three Sons", but I'm not sure.One of the pilots, whose wife has had several miscarriages, is told by a USAF psychiatrist that his wife is subconciously auto-aborting the fetuses because she doesn't think he's going to live long. Someone should have told her that the cigarettes and booze that everyone inhales would be much more hazardous to their health than an X-15! None of this matters, of course, because the film abruptly ends during the last mission without any resolution to all these "personal" problems. You can guess from the beginning that at least one of these guys is going to get killed- but I won't spoil the plot by saying who.A fun movie just for all the silver jets and yellow sand of Edwards AFB (at least shown in correct aspect ratio on the ground). Watch it on VHS and fast-forward through all the "mushy" stuff!

17 May 2012

Just like I remember

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) The movie is just as I remember it all those years ago. It told the story of the challenges and consequences of the men and women who risk their lives to advance the human spirit!

17 May 2012

Hideously distorted visuals, lousy plot and characters

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) As others have said, the archival NASA footage that makes up much of the film is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fit the Panavision format, resulting in grotesquely distorted aircraft and people. And unfortunately, the film wasn't very good to begin with. My advice: stay away from this stinker. If you want a good (not great, but good) rocket test pilot movie with undistorted archival footage, try "Toward the Unknown."

wakedph

16 May 2012

The DVD fits nicely in the library next to others such as The Right Stuff

The recent success of the SpaceShipOne spacecraft brought back to mindthe early attempt at sub-orbital flights. Its designer, told us that hebased his design on the X-15. Growing up in the 60's and 70's, thespace race was part of our lives and the X-15 program was one more steptowards space supremacy between the USA and the Soviet Union. Althoughthis beautiful bird was finally shelved, the courage and vision of itsdesigners merits that we take a second look at it. This movie,presented almost like a NASA -US AIR Force documentary, stayed in mymind although I was just a kid when I saw it on TV, some 30 odd yearsago. Filmed in the early sixties, this story introduces the viewer tothe team of 3 pilots that relay each other in the seat of the X-15experimental rocket plane. The family life of these test pilots is alsointeresting as it is explained that these men need emotional stabilityto do their job. We are introduced to a young Mary Tyler Moore as oneof the pilots fiancée. A young Charles Bronson plays one of thesefamily men / test pilots with great presence .The flying scenes footageis of relative good quality but the sub-orbital scenes are poorlycrafted animations that look terribly amateurish as we are now used toComputer Generated Images and other new special effects techniques. Allin all, this is a good movie for any space race fan, and the DVD fitsnicely in the library next to others such as The Right Stuff, From theEarth to the Moon and Apollo 13. I gave it a 7 for historical anddocumentary value.

16 May 2012

none

I really enjoyed this movie. It was very entertaining. The actores were great. Having first hand knowlege of the X-15 project, Ihought it was fairly accuarte.

14 May 2012

MGM DVD doesnt help this turkey either...

Dick Donner's directorial debut is about as far from auspicious as you want to get and is no way evocative of the successes he would enjoy in later years with the likes of Superman and the Lethal Weapon series. This maudlin, mysoginist, cliche-ridden old-school melodrama is further marred by aspect ratio problems that have been explained sufficiently by other reviewers, so I won't get into that here--but what adds insult to injury is MGM DVD's hack mastering job. The studio didn't even bother to optimize the film for 16.9 televisions, which partially would have allowed viewers with 1.33 TVs to compensate for the aspect ratio problem by making an adjustment in their DVD player's display settings. Furthermore, with today's digital technology it would have been easy enough to correct the aspect ratio problem in a post house by either adjusting the stock footage to 2.35:1 by zooming in on it, or remastering the whole film at 16.9 by slicing off the edges of the footage that Donner shot. I would have preferred the latter approach as it would have sacrificed very little in terms of picture fidelity, and if this were a worthwhile film, I'd rip the DVD to my hard drive and do the scaling myself in Adobe AfterEffects. But, alas, I have a life and will leave this pursuit to only the most die-hard purists out there. Bottom line, MGM need to get a clue in regards to consistently formatting their legacy releases to 16.9, a practice they have yet to adapt. All they need to do is walk into any Good Guys store and notice that the vast majority of large TVs now take advantage of the wider aspect ratio.

John Seal

13 May 2012

Very dull space film

One day someone will write a book comparing films of this sort to theartistic accomplishments of 1920s and 1930s Soviet socialist realism.Thereis minimal character development as the film focuses almost entirely onthetechnological triumphs of space age America. The fetishistic treatment ofthe space programme and all its minutiae is dull in the extreme, and theonly relief is a stolid performance by the always reliable James Gregory.

12 May 2012

The worst in my collection

This review is from: X-15 (DVD) As an aviation enthusiast, and particularly the X-15, I eagerly awaited the DVD to come out. I went over it in less than 2 minutes. The important scenes, the NASA footage, are so badly stretched beyond recognition, that I will keep my VHS copy from TV broadcast as my main copy, at least the plane sequences were ok there. Terribly disappointing. Will have to wait until spacecraft-films will release their documentary on the X-15 (announced since last year). Shame on you, MGM !

11 May 2012

Please Fix The Anamorphic Stretch

Being an aviation enthusiast, I welcome any DVD release pertaining to aviation. "X-15" is no exception, even though this picture leaves much to be desired. I am especially critical of the official US Air Force photography of the X-15, the B-52, and the F-100 and F-104 chase plane sequences. Originally shot in the "flat" format, then viewed with an anamorphic "scope" lens, the images are stretched, so that these sequences are very distracting. I saw this film in the theater, and it was equally distracting there. With a now very sucessful director like Richard Donner and a studio like MGM, you would have thought the DVD release could have been corrected. A true disappointment!

Paul Raveling

10 May 2012

Uncommonly good technical accuracy, otherwise mostly lame

Substantial good footage of actual X-15 flights, better than in some of thedocumentaries I've seen. The strongest points of this film are the flightfootage and its technical accuracy.This film was produced with meticulous script review of technical detailsbyNASA Dryden and by the Air Force. Even in shots showing actors fakingflightactions in the cockpit what they show is accurate in the sense that it'sthetruth even if it's not the whole truth. The best way to appreciate much ofthis is to first study the X-15 flight manual. In any case the attentiontotechnical accuracy is remarkable by the standards of sci fi &aviation/spacemovies made around 1961. It appeared that nearly the entire film was shotonlocation at NASA Dryden and Edwards AFB. All flight footage is real exceptfor a couple short hokey segments showing a model for flight outside theatmosphere and during reentry.The rest (script, production, directing, & such) is fairly lame andunderwhelming. If only Tom Hanks had an urge to redo this film the resultprobably would be a great one, but it wasn't Tom Hanks who did thisedition.Bottom line: X-plane enthusiasts will love the real & authentic action,butmost others will conclude that it's appropriate for this flick to only showup infrequently on obscure cable & satellite channels.

x-15a2

10 May 2012

Oh, come on, have some fun!

OK, so X-15 isn't the best of Hollywood, but it IS the 2nd best X-Planesmovie ever (second to Right Stuff, but better than SpaceCowboys).Call it a docu-drama, call it campy, call it naive, whatever. This is agreat Saturday afternoon movie. It's a blast to see MTM and CharlieBronsontogether. Those of us with a fascination with historic aircraft love theauthentic footage. Hey, the movie even got a mention in Milt Thompson'sBook"At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program".So, do your best to find a copy, forget Soviet comparisons, check yourmindat the door and enjoy X-15!

09 May 2012

The lazy way to put out an old film

"dhoggan" is right on the money. This is the lazy way to release an old film. Nothing could have been easier than to have re-worked this film in a full-frame version with the NASA footage sections returned to their original dimensions, which are naturally full-frame. You'd think it would have been a breeze with the available technology and software. Instead of being able to advertise a newly restored version that's better than the original theatrical release ever was, they end up with a DVD that's getting pathetic reviews and which isn't likely to sell. Sales from the corrected version would surely have offset the cost of the easy re-working of the film. The problem here lies with whoever is responsible for marketing this stuff. Come on MGM - you're supposed to be better than this. How about actually THINKING first.

northamericanx15

09 May 2012

Nice entertainment for X-plane lovers

As a teenager I don't see myself falling into the average 6 voting.Even though the 60s is not my decade, I still love this movie. Itshould be appreciated for the simply its existence. Besides the RightStuff, we don't really see much of them depict the space race sospecifically. Starring MTM and Bronson is better than random actorsanyways. At least we see how fine MTM use to be.Inviting popular movie stars showed how important this project is. Thepower of how much people cares during that decade is amazing compare tothe significance of it today. Usually, how much public cares indicateshow well the technological advancement is going to turnout.Unfortunately that enthusastism is long gone... You won't seeanother movie over space exploration anymore.

29 April 2012

Beware of wide screen format

The DVD is formatted for a 2.35:1 screen. It looks like most conventional TV's are 4.33:1, so.... what does this mean? My 4.33 TV stretches this movie out the picture twice what it was meant for. The images are squished looking. The B-52 in this looks like a flying Queen Mary. Make sure your TV/DVD player accepts 2.35:1 ratios or you will be very frustrated watching this.

Steve Towsley

29 April 2012

Early Bronson film re experimental rocketplane into space

From the late 50s, this early Charles Bronson starrer dramatized thereal-life development of the rocket-powered X-15 experimental aircraft,which was launched from the belly of a B-52 bomber and was flown bytest pilots to high speeds and high altitude in an effort to touch theedge of space. The X-15 was a successful part of the development program that alsoincluded precursors like the X-1 and the Stiletto, and later producedpilots for NASA and technology used in early space shuttle concepts. I saw the film more than once on its initial run, and it seems to methis was sometimes double-billed with the somewhat similar air powergoings-on of Karl Maulden's BOMBERS B-52.