Apollo 13

In April 1970, astronaut Jim Lovell contacted mission control with the words "Houston, we've had a problem." It was a classic understatement, signalling a huge, complex malfunction to be solved. Lovell and his crew - Jack Swigert and Fred Haise - were bound for the Moon when an oxygen tank exploded in their craft, leaving them potentially stranded in space. It gave Nasa's scientists the most nail-biting countdown of the space age so far and kept Americans - by then blasé about the space programme - glued to their TVs. It is the ultimate rescue story and the movie pays due tribute to the bravery of the astronauts as well as American know-how. Lovell is played by Tom Hanks, whose very ordinariness - blandness, some would say - is the essence of astronaut-man, while Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton as Swigert and Haise offer welcome contrasts, as does the superb Ed Harris as the chain-smoking mission controller. Partially filmed in genuine weightless conditions, Ron Howard's movie is a technical tour de force.