The Moon: Photo courtesy NASA.The new documentary IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON is both inspirational and awe-inspiring in its retelling of NASA’s Apollo program to place a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. The great thing about it is that it’s the Apollo astronauts themselves who tell the story.

Director David Singleton interviewed 10 of the remaining astronauts who had traveled to the Moon and back including Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and 17), Dave Scott (Apollo 15), Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17), Charlie Duke (Apollo 16), and Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11). Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, is not interviewed, but the notoriously reclusive astronaut appears quite a bit in the film, and of course can be heard taking his famous first step on the Moon’s surface.

Besides the many technical triumphs, the film also touches on some of the setbacks NASA faced in its race to fulfill president Kennedy’s seemingly impossible lunar-landing dream, including exploding Saturn V rockets, the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts, and Apollo 13’s doomed mission.

I’m a big fan of the whole Man on the Moon adventure, so a lot of the NASA film footage used in the film was already familiar to me, but some scenes (especially one when Apollo 11’s command module heads off toward the Moon) were a complete surprise, and just seeing it all on the big screen was a real treat.

Astronaut Alan Bean on the adventure of his life: Photo courtesy NASA.The astronauts themselves – now in their seventies - come off much warmer and more human than I expected. Alan Bean, in particular, seemed like an exuberant child telling you all about the great amusement ride he got to go on.

So if you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong exclaimed “Houston, the Eagle has landed”, and even if you don’t - or even if you weren’t born yet – I recommend you see this really great film. You’ll relive, or experience for the first time, all the excitement of one of mankind’s boldest and greatest achievements.