Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight
Book
To date, everything written about Armstong's life and flights has been written from the outside...
Armstrong (2019)
8.0
Rate It
Movie Watch
Dramatic, moving and deeply human, ARMSTRONG offers the definitive life story of Neil Armstrong:...
Apollo 11 (2019)
7.6
Rate It
Movie Watch
A look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz...
Awix (3310 KP) rated First Man (2018) in Movies
Oct 26, 2018 (Updated Oct 26, 2018)
Neil Armstrong/Apollo 11 movie eschews flag-waving bombast and conventional spectacle by focusing much more on what was going on inside Armstrong's head during the moon mission and its build-up (by the way, I have a horrible suspicion that the moon-landing sequence in this movie was faked in a studio). Given that Armstrong himself was such a notably quiet and undemonstrative man, this seems like a good choice, although whether it excuses Damien Chazelle's choice to depict Armstrong's whole career in space as some kind of coping mechanism for dealing with a family tragedy is probably a matter of personal taste.
Like its subject, this is a notably low-key and unflashy film, and many may find it slow-going; space fans will probably have a lot to enjoy, though. The actual moon-landing sequence is superb, flag or no flag. In the end this is (perhaps inevitably) less of a guaranteed crowd-pleaser than La La Land (Chazelle and Gosling's last film together) but still a substantial and impressive movie.