The Right Stuff

It still thrills with its expert casting and dazzling visuals.

The Right Stuff gives off a pleasurable hum: it’s the writer-director Philip Kaufman’s enjoyment of the subject, the actors, and moviemaking itself.

Where 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted astronauts (and mankind) as being at the mercy of some higher, alien intelligence, The Right Stuff finds its characters imposing their will on the unknown.

Philip Kaufman's 1983 film is an efficient and absorbing recapitulation of the main events of Tom Wolfe's book that still never succeeds in capturing the inner drives and ethics of the test pilots and astronauts - the "right stuff" never materializes.

Rarely has a film made a historic accomplishment seem so vivid and personal... It makes you wonder, quite suddenly, why there aren't more movies like this.

The Right Stuff is a spectacular celebration of those heroes of the skies -- those fly jocks who fought the demons of space to launch a new era in American air technology.

Informative, straightforward, and an admirable dramatization of a monumental era and program and its key players.

This timely delve into the past - warts and all - to uncover the roots of a future we are now participating in has a basic ingredient that so many films lately have lacked. And that is integrity

Episode 12: Away We Go

The Right Stuff is so clumsily shot and has such a simple structure that boredom can threaten to drown the viewer's patience. [Full Review in Spanish]