Visitors Review

(2012-05-25 23:00)

MGM DVD doesn't 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.

wakedph (2012-05-25 05:11)

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.

(2012-05-25 06:55)

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.

(2012-05-24 18:51)

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...

Paul Raveling (2012-05-22 04:39)

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.

oscar-35 (2012-05-21 23:35)

A sadly hopelessly forgettable film

*Spoiler/plot- 1961, The courageous Air Force pilots of the secretrocket plane, X-15 program are determined to take the rocket plane 100miles above the Earth into the edge of Space. The same craft's engineswill be pushed to reach the new speed of four times the speed of sound,a never before feat. They wish to prove American air supremacy in theCold War space-race and prove that space travel can be next toaccomplish. These pilots have a lot at stake and their terrified wivesthey've left behind.*Special Stars- David Mclean, Charles Bronson, James Gregory, MaryTyler Moore.*Theme- Yankee courage and ingenuity gets any job done.*Trivia/location/goofs- See Mary Tyler Moore in a non-starring minorsupporting role. Many continuity film goofs due to archive researchfilm being cut into the shooting scenes of this film. Air Force vet, TVhost and Orange County Congressman, Robert Dornan has an unaccreditedAir Force blockhouse technician part.*Emotion- A sadly hopelessly forgettable film of these dramatichistoric flight victories in the early days of sound barrier flightleading to the moon shots. If you're a fan of such flight history,watch another film and not this one. This one is terribly boring andpredicable. The real story drama could have been done better. This isalmost a training film for how not to make an interesting film on agreat script topic.

John Seal (2012-05-20 13:32)

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.

(2012-05-19 18:28)

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.

Boba_Fett1138 (2012-05-19 16:34)

Like the more boring and less interesting movie version of "The Right Stuff".

So, this is a Richard Donner movie (his first one), starring CharlesBronson in a lead role and it has James Stewart(!) narrating but yet noone has ever heard off this movie? It sounds all weird but thereactually is a very logical explanation for it; the movie just isn'tvery good or memorable.It's hard to even really call this a movie in the first place. It'sstuck somewhere between being a documentary and a slow moving drama.The entire story is being told in such a way that it almost feels likea documentary you are watching, complete with a lot of technicaldetails and background information about the airplanes and missions. Nobig surprise, since the movie got actually made with the help of thespace program and the air force. In a way you could even call thismovie 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 aswell as for all of its characters. The movie also never becomes a veryinteresting one to watch because of that very same reason. There is nota clear enough main plot line that it is following and because of thatalso all of the developments in it fall short and everything feelswithout consequences. It doesn't matter at all for the viewer when atest fails, or a plane blows up. You just don't ever feel involvedenough with any of it, to care about anything.It all also makes this movie a bit of a boring one and definitely alsooverlong, since it starts to repeat itself pretty early on already andsometimes scenes just go on for far too long, without serving really apurpose for the movie in the first place.It really doesn't matter at all that Charles Bronson, amongst others isin this movie. None of the characters get to do anything good orinteresting and the acting and whole directing approach of this moviereminded me of a '50's science-fiction flick, that too desperatelywanted to be taken serious as a movie. It feels the need to throw inall kinds of technical aspects and nonsensical questions, that arecompletely irrelevant in todays perspective. It's all very forced andwooden and lacks depth of any sort.But please, allow me to also still say something positive about thismovie. Because it got made with the help of the air force, the aerialmoments are great looking ones. Normally movies like this would haduses some standard archive footage of planes flying but this movie isvery 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 narratingthis thing. However strangely enough the narration suddenly stops halfway through the movie and Stewart can't be heard again, until the veryend of the movie.Do yourself a favor and watch "The Right Stuff" instead. It for somepart handles some of the same subjects, about the earliest days of thespace program and test flying but it does this a far more interestingand exciting way, than this movie ever does. 5/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

(2012-05-19 03:16)

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!

haildevilman (2012-05-17 07:23)

Remember when?

This is one of those flicks you find by accident. You see a fewfamiliar names in the cast, notice the early date, then rent it on awhim. And if you're like me, you say to yourself, "Good choice." Aspace film without all the invasion drama. This dealt with actualexploration. And unlike a lot of sci-fi, seemed to take it seriously.Mary Tyler Moore in an early role, and she looked good. The talent wasblossoming.Bronson played his usual strong, weary type. He never had a prayer as asex symbol, but he was underrated as an actor.This is in need of reviving.

(2012-05-17 00:57)

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."

Steve Towsley (2012-05-16 14:07)

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.

(2012-05-15 19:39)

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.

(2012-05-12 13:17)

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!

northamericanx15 (2012-05-11 16:42)

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.

Air America (2012-05-05 02:06)

A Major Disappointment II

I have to agree, the filming in this is just short of unwatchable.Whose idea was it to stretch out a film's segment to fit the 2.35:1screen? This could have been a good film but it is like sitting in somedoctor's or other office where they stretch out a 4:3 broadcast to filla 16:9 screen. Many scenes cannot even be adjusted with the screenchoices on my TV which allows format choices. B-52s and F-100s one anda half times their length in reality. An out-of-round X-15 rocketnozzle . . .Its a fair story. I see the often used picture of an F-100 losingflight control and ending up cartwheeling in flames is shown as seen inother films.It would have been acceptable to just leave the 4:3 screen film stockalone instead of stretching it. I hope there are no more films donethis way. I have seen a lot of films but this is the first time I eversaw this resorted to. A very poor rendition is the obvious result.

TC-4 (2012-05-04 22:25)

Better as a documentary

Just about 40 years ago I saw this movie in an Air Force theater where I wasstationed. It was the very first movie that I saw after basic training. I thought the movie was terriffic then when I first saw it in wide-screen. I just saw it on a premium channel without commercials but it was not inwide-screen so a lot of it was missing.The flying scenes were very good as they were probably mostly shot by theAir Force but the family life scenes off-duty were very boring andpredictable and mostly used a filler. What makes me smile is that thecharacters were just like those in a soap opera, in other words all thewives are gorgeous and the pilots were all perfect malespecimens.Since I first saw this movie 40 years ago I have seen many documentarys ontv about the X-15 which were far more interesting and real than this hokeymovie. I might be wrong but I thought that in the theater 40 years ago themovie started with Jimmy Stewart at his desk in his Air Force uniform butthis was not in this version but I am not sure.

(2012-05-02 07:15)

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!

(2012-05-01 14:57)

This movie isn't as bad as some of it's 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.......................