First Man

Gosling, who previously worked with Chazelle on “La La Land,” is perfectly cast.

A stunning cinematic achievement that celebrates one of humanity’s biggest triumphs (and mourns the tragedies that happened leading up to it), yet it never loses sight of its personal and small-scale story about a man going to work.

It’s a credit to the filmmakers and to lead actor Ryan Gosling’s thoughtfully internalized performance as Neil Armstrong that this sober, contemplative picture has emotional involvement, visceral tension, and yes, even suspense, in addition to stunning technical craft.

Steering an astonishingly accomplished path between the small steps and the giant leaps of the Apollo 11 mission, reigning Best Director Damien Chazelle opens the 75th Venice Film Festival with First Man, an immersive, immaculately crafted, often spectacular and satisfyingly old-fashioned epic that may well become the definitive moon-landing movie.

Chazelle has always specialised in virtuoso endings, and his sure hand and sharp eye brings this ambitious character study smoothly into land.

The way that Chazelle films the inside of a cockpit (claustrophobic, sensorily overwhelming, fraught with potential danger) and space (stark, haunting, stunning) are both testaments to what’s possible with the latest advancements in technology and vision in filmmaking. That said, it’s hard not to wonder why this particular film, as well-crafted as it is, was made now.

More than a third of its runtime is frustratingly lifeless, mimicking the repressed, impassive psyche of Ryan Gosling’s astronaut, and when Chazelle finally takes us to that big rock in the sky, the sequences may be gorgeous to look at, but the film fails to capture how awe-inspiring something as epic as a trip to the moon must have been.

Truly one of my favorite movies about space journeys and moon landings. The attention to detail and accuracy amazed me. Also the cinematography was absolutly stunning! I loved it when the Apollo 11 spacecraft launched. I fully recommend this movie!

Historical themed film about the moon landing. In addition to the historical theme, the dramatic theme of the disappearance of the protagonist's daughter is also developed, which allows the film not to be a documentary but also to create a story around the historical event, succeeding in its intent without overshadowing the main theme on which the film is based

This is the best Chazelle's movie and of course his most watchable one. The screenplay doesn't feel too much overloaded here and Gosling offers a more convincing performance than usual (probabily his best one after Refn "Drive").

I didn't come to watch a movie about putting the first man on the moon to see watch a movie that included anything about his homelife. Stick to the mission, the engineering, the math, the man, and the team. I could not have cared less about the story of his boring ass wife.

First Man is so painfully boring that doesn't even open space for immersion, even with camera's cuts that in theory should passing sensation of suffocating lived by characters.