Apollo 13

1995

Ron Howard's docudrama reconstructs NASA's April 1970 lunar mission that became a rescue operation after an oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from Earth. Tom Hanks plays commander Jim Lovell, with Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon as his crew, Gary Sinise as the grounded astronaut Ken Mattingly, and Ed Harris as flight director Gene Kranz. Praised for its technical accuracy, including scenes shot in actual weightlessness aboard a NASA training aircraft, it won two Academy Awards and remains the standard Hollywood account of the space program's finest improvisation.