First Man (Damian Chazelle)

[Ezee E]

IMDB

[TGM]

This was good, not great. Whiplash showed that Chazelle can do thrilling, but that wasn’t really shown here in moments that felt like they should’ve been quite tense. La La Land showed he can do emotion, but again, the scenes that feel like they’re striving for some sort of tug on the emotional heart strings are completely devoid of the intended emotion in their execution here. And considering how much of the movie is about Armstrong bottling up his grief, maybe that’s intended? But it sure does feel like they were going for waterworks with one scene in particular after they land on the moon, and yeah, that wasn’t working for me. And it definitely felt like most of the movie was more concerned with making sure Gosling has enough key Oscar moments to ensure at least another nomination this year.

So all things considered, the film honestly rings pretty hollow, particularly compared to the director’s previous work. But even so, I still found the movie enjoyable as an okay enough effort. I was never bored during its long runtime, and I did find the story interesting, but it does feel like another typical 2018 release in any event, which means I’ll almost certainly forget it by next week.

I know this movie’s based on a true story and all, but Interstellar already did mostly everything this film set out to do, and actually managed to pull it off with all the intended emotion intact. So as a compelling piece of cinema, this is a pretty big bust, but as a neat little history lesson for 2 and a half hours, it’s alright.

[Ezee E]

Outside of a stellar moon landing sequence and a terrific score, I think this was just okay? Anything family-related was pretty atypical, and this is mostly all stuff we've seen before.

The whole moon landing sequence and Hurwitz's score to it makes me enjoy it for that reason alone. The two other space sequences are also pretty thrilling and more visceral than most other space movies. So I'll hand it that.

[Spinal]

I think the highlight of the film is actually not the moon landing, but rather the Gemini 8 sequence. Good movie. I appreciate that the film has rhythms that are not typical to a film involving space exploration. It seemed that there was an intentional choice to mirror Armstrong's reserved personality by not amping up the emotional pull of the soundtrack or pushing too hard for poetry. There's also a lot of choices involving tight, subjective shots, intended to tie us as tightly as possible to Armstrong's perspective. There's a few 'big-picture' shots, but mostly it's views from tiny windows and sometimes even first-person. I don't know if it's a film for the ages, but there's a lot of thoughtfulness and artistic care here to tell the story authentically. My suspicion is that it's a film that even an astronaut might approve of.

[Weems]

Really good stuff. This isn't getting as much buzz as Chazelle's prior films, but I think it's his best by far. Finally working from a good script seems to have unlocked Chazelle.

[transmogrifier]

To be honest, I’m dreading this. Not a huge fan of Chazelle’s stuff so far, I find biopics of individual people uninteresting and I especially find domestic drama centered around work to be real fucking boring. Through in what is apparently a shitload of closeups and handheld camerawork for even sedate family scenes and I’m quite frankly concerned.

[megladon8]

Haven’t seen it but the trailers and promotional stuff pretty much scream “movie that’s loved by everyone except MatchCut”.

[TGM]

Yeah, the trailers really didn’t do much for me. But I’ve really loved the director’s other films, so I just chalked it up to being a weak trailer. Turns out it was actually a pretty accurate depiction.

[Watashi]

I loved, loved, loved this.

Might be my favorite of the year. It's the anti-Apollo 13. Very reserved and less "Fuck yeah NASA" than you think. The score might be the best score of the decade.

[Pop Trash]

For better or worse, a lot of this plays out like Paul Greengrass's The Right Stuff w/ tight close-ups, shaky hand-held camerawork, crash zooms, a brisk average shot length, and a dry docudrama procedural quality. It should also be noted that this is the first airborn film that feels like genuine horror since United 93 fried my nerves back in 2006.

There are moments in the first half, especially the domestic drama with Claire Foy, (quite good, even if her American accent is a little stilted) when I started to wonder what this would be like if a careful formalist like David Fincher or Steven Soderbergh tackled this material (even if I suspect Soderbergh's version would have undercurrents of wry humor and would somehow figure out a way to tie-in a critique of American capitalist systems) since the Greengrass aping seems a little silly in those family moments and would have been better served with more meticulous visual formalities as a juxtaposition to the intense, almost abstract blur during the space launches.

It's during these space launches in the second half -particularly after the Apollo 1 crew dies in a fire- that the movie really, umm, takes off. The Apollo 11 moon landing itself is nearly perfect in its quiet attention to detail (the camera lingering on the lunar foot print) and is only hindered by Chazelle's head slapping decision to breakup the meditative negative space of the moon walk with intercut footage of Armstrong's family back on earth. I think we know what Armstrong was thinking about without the visual cues, Damien.

[transmogrifier]

58/100

Spoiler Alert: Neil Armstrong was a boring guy.

Which is okay, because you can still be boring and achieve great things and be loved and whatever, but it's peculiar to want to take something as momentous as the space race and the moon landing, not to mention the civil upheaval going on around it, and limit your scope to one staid, dull figurehead who has the same arguments with his wife that all staid, dull figureheads who work long hours or do dangerous things for a living have had and will have in the future. There is no drama there, nothing to throw the nuts and bolts of the NASA project into relief. The fact that the film shies away from tackling the consequences of the actual deaths to keep banging the same key on the keyboard over and over - Armstrong could die and his wife ain't happy about it - makes the family drama even less inviting - why are we following this drip except for the fact that the politics and fate manoeuvred him into the leadership role?

Chazelle doesn't have an answer to this, so he just throws the camera around trying to make the Armstrong story more gritty and drama-filled than it actually ever is. So it is even more frustrating when he clicks into some moments of brilliance (the opening is tense and disorientating, a perfect encapsulation of life as an astronaut; the brief montage set to "Whitey on the Moon" which enticingly touches on the public reaction to the Apollo missions; the horrific suddenness of the fire) that hint at what could have been if he wasn't so dedicated to trying to pick away at the story behind the legend. There was never a story there. The best version of this tale would never see Armstrong out of NASA gear.

[Peng]

The tiredness of usual biopic convention is both overcome and subverted by sheer humane intimacy, which is so absolute to the point of nausea at times. There is the film's embodiment of Armstrong's perspective, reflected in both Gosling's still-water-runs-deep performance and the half-exasperating, half-thrilling verite depiction of life through his eyes (until that breathtaking, appropriately otherworldly break of aesthetics on the moon), which renders so many biopic tropes new again. It's easy to forget you're watching one of the most well-known true stories ever when being stuffed in those queasily quivering, rusty-looking old-tech boxes and spinning between the unforgiving force of gravity and the black nothingness of space, which conversely makes it even more gratifying and awe-inspiring, in both film and real life, that we still managed to pull this off. Even the most thankless role of this genre, wife-at-home, is made to feel refreshingly forceful by Foy's internal strength, and the film taking care and some time away from Gosling to navigate her plight in the suburb of astronauts' wives; I was engaged but actually still unsure of this approach's effectiveness until the film managed to mine poignancy out of another wife's turned back in a driveway.

Of two minds about that backstory as protagonist's "obvious" main drive, which I feel suits Gravity's maximalist approach more than this film's idiosyncratic style. But then the film's climax has me rather moved by the notion that it takes the biggest break of Armstrong's perspective, both in the film's direction (from verite to classically epic) and story (arriving at his destination, in the void at the end of another world), for him to finally acknowledge something past his stoic surface. And it's complicated by the loud ambivalence of that last scene, which doesn't ring a triumphant note as much as a mildly relieved return to not-exactly-stable status quo; a gigantic accomplishment not washing away all troubles, but it's enough for now. 8.5/10

[Dukefrukem]

Does this film look blurry to anyone? Like there was a screen put in front of every shot? Is there a name for this / how it was shot? (to make it look like we are in the 60s?)

[Ezee E]

Does this film look blurry to anyone? Like there was a screen put in front of every shot? Is there a name for this / how it was shot? (to make it look like we are in the 60s?)

I didn't get that feeling, but I'm guessing you're wondering if a gel or filter was used? It definitely felt in that time period so I could've been overlooking it. I know certain scenes were shot in 70 MM (may have just been the moon landing...)

[Dukefrukem]

I didn't get that feeling, but I'm guessing you're wondering if a gel or filter was used? It definitely felt in that time period so I could've been overlooking it. I know certain scenes were shot in 70 MM (may have just been the moon landing...)

I noticed it most during the intro, and most of the first half. It's just a slight haze, like everything is out of focus. Put a Star Wars (or something of similar ilk) movie next to it and you notice it.

[Lazlo]

Much of the movie is shot on 16mm while the moon scenes in IMAX. 16 haas inherently less resolution than 35mm or modern day digital photography, so that may be the cause of what you're sensing.

[Dukefrukem]

That'll do it. Thanks Lazlo.

[Dukefrukem]

BTW, like what most said, this was good not great. This absolutely did not deserve to win best VFX. The complexity of other movies nominated is way more impressive. Anyone know how historically accurate the portrayal of Buzz Aldrin was? They really made him come off like a blunt asshole.

[Lazlo]

BTW, like what most said, this was good not great. This absolutely did not deserve to win best VFX. The complexity of other movies nominated is way more impressive. Anyone know how historically accurate the portrayal of Buzz Aldrin was? They really made him come off like a blunt asshole.

I was pulling for it for VFX because of how well integrated and just plain convincing it all was. Things like Avengers, Black Panther, and Solo are becoming way less impressive to me because they feel like CG animated movies with live action interludes. Their set extensions and green-screen work are pretty transparent. I get that there's a heightened reality, comic book-ness that they're going for but it still irks me to see two characters having an emotional conversation in front of what's clearly a fake location. And anytime I see a shot breakdown video where it shows me how they, for example, put an entirely CGI War Machine in an entirely CGI sky fighting entirely CGI monsters I kind of shrug. Like, it looks great, but that's not what impresses me when it comes to VFX. Thanos and L3-37 were well done, though.

[Grouchy]

I would have been satisfied with a short film about the moon landing, to be honest. Everything else fell flat for me, most of all the insipid and dull family drama. Gosling is a good man for the role because his limited acting skills fit well with Armstrong's cold, calculating personality, and Chazelle does manage to create a personality for every other astronaut in the mission, but this is difficult subject matter - while fascinating to read about, it's kind of anti-cinematic to wait on astronauts following protocols we know little about for a long time. I think the director succeeded in making those scenes cinematically beautiful but the background needed to make them human drama failed.