That’s one small step for man… one collective heavy sigh for mankind.
First Man is Oscar bait stacked on top of Oscar bait.
A movie about space exploration, but really it’s about a man exploring his (in)ability to accept or deal with death and grief, maaaannnn.
Do you like to watch Ryan Gosling meditatively stare?
Good, go watch Drive or Only God Forgives. This movie’s full of that, but the worst crime of cinema is committed… it’s not entertaining. The space sequences are executed with a surgeon’s scalpel. Avoiding any sense of danger or fun or mischief beyond plentiful ‘the craft is not stable’ shake shots.
First Man is a subpar entry into the (already overstacked) “tough times at NASA” subgenre.
At times it plays like a Terry Malick flick, but aspires to… actually, I don’t know what this film aspired to be. It felt like a guy was handed a generous budget and wanted to make sure to film it like a home movie from the 60s and dammit, that’s exactly what he did.
Hollywood “wünderkind” Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) cooks up another entry in his growing catalog of flicks exploring the same theme/subject he keeps coming back to; misunderstood white dude is super dedicated to this niche thing and everybody else has to suffer for it.
For being a perfectionist, he sure could take a step back and maybe perfect the scripts he chooses to take forward?
Damien Chazelle seems to think to have ‘drama’ one must create an atmosphere of stillness and fully embraces Weepie-esque circumstances/character development.
How many diseases and tragedies we already all must endure in life already? And now this film on top of that at a punishing near 3-hour runtime.
Damien, bro… don’t add to the pile. It’s okay to just have fun. You’re in your thirties making midlife crisis movie after midlife crisis movie. It’s boring when great filmmakers do it and… well… you fill in the blank.
Positives: looks great, shot on film, Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin (a highlight — and who the movie should have been about)
Negatives: most of the time the camera is being handled by someone who has a body tremor?
First Man decides that cinematically what we all need to do is atone and be punished and capital “F” Feel and, well, it’s not for me.
If you’re all about a movie about Neil Armstrong being a stoic… by all means, go check this out.
Vibes of Jackie (2016) and Malick’s Tree of Life/Knight of Cups ever-present. Go watch those instead.
Not worth a dollar. Will probably end up getting Oscar nominations, but not a chance in hell it’s ending up at the Dollar Theater Best Of podcast.
Far better space films: Apollo 13, Spaceballs, Wall-E, Mars Attacks!