X-15 (1961)

An absolute waste of money

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Saw this at time of its release and sat through it again for nostalgia only. "Beautiful aircraft" is the only positive thing I can write about it. At 1 hr 45 mins it's far too long. Better to watch a documentary. Often this comes across as a doco anyhow. Listen to the James Stewart narration, the press conferences, the control room dialogue. Even when one of the wives is told of her husband's death, it is explained in technical terms! As well as the ludicrous lines about I'd give you a hug (to comfort her) except that it's too soon - or something as cold. Those wives are the closest thing to Stepford wives you'll see. If this served as some sort of NASA propaganda at the time then it fails. Choicest role goes not to any of the adults but to the young son played by Stanley Livingstone, later one of My Three Sons on TV. At least he gets to show some genuine emotion. Trivia: lead actor David McLean is the famous Marlboro Man who later died of lung cancer (according to Wikipedia).

So, this is a Richard Donner movie (his first one), starring Charles Bronson in a lead role and it has James Stewart(!) narrating but yet no one has ever heard off this movie? It sounds all weird but there actually is a very logical explanation for it; the movie just isn't very good or memorable.It's hard to even really call this a movie in the first place. It's stuck somewhere between being a documentary and a slow moving drama. The entire story is being told in such a way that it almost feels like a documentary you are watching, complete with a lot of technical details and background information about the airplanes and missions. No big surprise, since the movie got actually made with the help of the space program and the air force. In a way you could even call this movie a piece of propaganda.But the movie also still tries to tell a story. Not hard enough though. Everything remains terribly underdeveloped, this goes for the story as well as for all of its characters. The movie also never becomes a very interesting one to watch because of that very same reason. There is not a clear enough main plot line that it is following and because of that also all of the developments in it fall short and everything feels without consequences. It doesn't matter at all for the viewer when a test fails, or a plane blows up. You just don't ever feel involved enough with any of it, to care about anything.It all also makes this movie a bit of a boring one and definitely also overlong, since it starts to repeat itself pretty early on already and sometimes scenes just go on for far too long, without serving really a purpose for the movie in the first place.It really doesn't matter at all that Charles Bronson, amongst others is in this movie. None of the characters get to do anything good or interesting and the acting and whole directing approach of this movie reminded me of a '50's science-fiction flick, that too desperately wanted to be taken serious as a movie. It feels the need to throw in all kinds of technical aspects and nonsensical questions, that are completely irrelevant in todays perspective. It's all very forced and wooden and lacks depth of any sort.But please, allow me to also still say something positive about this movie. Because it got made with the help of the air force, the aerial moments are great looking ones. Normally movies like this would had uses some standard archive footage of planes flying but this movie is very consistent with its look and often shows some great, insightful, moments in the air, also often from the perspective of the pilot. At first I also was very excited when hearing James Stewart narrating this thing. However strangely enough the narration suddenly stops half way through the movie and Stewart can't be heard again, until the very end of the movie.Do yourself a favor and watch "The Right Stuff" instead. It for some part handles some of the same subjects, about the earliest days of the space program and test flying but it does this a far more interesting and exciting way, than this movie ever does. 5/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

The recent success of the SpaceShipOne spacecraft brought back to mind the early attempt at sub-orbital flights. Its designer, told us that he based his design on the X-15. Growing up in the 60's and 70's, the space race was part of our lives and the X-15 program was one more step towards space supremacy between the USA and the Soviet Union. Although this beautiful bird was finally shelved, the courage and vision of its designers merits that we take a second look at it. This movie, presented almost like a NASA -US AIR Force documentary, stayed in my mind although I was just a kid when I saw it on TV, some 30 odd years ago. Filmed in the early sixties, this story introduces the viewer to the team of 3 pilots that relay each other in the seat of the X-15 experimental rocket plane. The family life of these test pilots is also interesting as it is explained that these men need emotional stability to do their job. We are introduced to a young Mary Tyler Moore as one of the pilots fiancée. A young Charles Bronson plays one of these family men / test pilots with great presence .The flying scenes footage is of relative good quality but the sub-orbital scenes are poorly crafted animations that look terribly amateurish as we are now used to Computer Generated Images and other new special effects techniques. All in all, this is a good movie for any space race fan, and the DVD fits nicely in the library next to others such as The Right Stuff, From the Earth to the Moon and Apollo 13. I gave it a 7 for historical and documentary value.

From the late 50s, this early Charles Bronson starrer dramatized the real-life development of the rocket-powered X-15 experimental aircraft, which was launched from the belly of a B-52 bomber and was flown by test pilots to high speeds and high altitude in an effort to touch the edge of space. The X-15 was a successful part of the development program that also included precursors like the X-1 and the Stiletto, and later produced pilots 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 me this was sometimes double-billed with the somewhat similar air power goings-on of Karl Maulden's BOMBERS B-52.