Guess What Everyone, We Have Another Winner!

First Man is about the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.  If you didn’t know that then I honestly don’t know why you clicked on this article. It’s the story of how Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on The Moon – one of the most important moments in human history and it baffles me that we’re still fumbling around with human trips to Mars.

For awhile I was considering skipping this movie because the trailer for this movie looked awful, it completely turned me off. But this movie was getting some good reviews and it has a great director in Damien Chazelle so I decided to give it a watch. I’m glad I watched it because it’s really good. (Why do all the best movies have the worst trailers?)

I was expecting this to be a cheap, rushed together cash-in for the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing, but it isn’t. It was made by people who actually put some heart and passion into it.  This story is about the personal struggles of Neil Armstrong and his family and also about the trial and error attempts to get to the moon, showing off the more realistic side of the life of an astronaut. It’s very grounded in reality where you can get behind what’s currently going down in these characters’ lives. It feels very realistic to how I imagine it would be like as a lab rat for NASA’s death experiments. It’s the complete opposite to The Greatest Showman where all you need to do is sing all your problems away.

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong I felt was a good choice because I don’t really imagine anyone else doing it.  Claire Foy as Neil’s wife I thought was also fantastic and the same with Jason Clarke, Corey Stroll, Kyle Chandler and pretty much a great cast altogether. There is other stuff I liked, for example the camera work in this movie was really spot on especially for the space travel scenes but we’ll get to those. Some of the best scenes in the movie include scenes with no dialogue but when done right they can be very beautiful scenes, for example one of the scenes close to the end  which I felt was very powerful and conveyed alot with no words required.

I’m guessing this movie could be compared to Apollo 13 and maybe even Gravity to some extent since the highlight of those movies is the space travel. But First Man blows those movies out of the water as I believe it features the best depiction of space travel in a movie. I strongly believe this because most of the shots while travelling in space are from the perspective as if we were sitting alongside Neil. You feel the shaking, the nauseous feeling, the limited view of the area around you and the goosebumps and the feeling of fear, if this was shown in a 4D theatre it would probably add to the experience. These scenes are very tense and nerve-racking and I believe some of the best sequences to be put on camera so far this year.

I should probably mention The Moon Landing itself which was very nicely built up to throughout the movie so that when Neil Armstrong finally takes his first steps on the moon it has great impact – kind of like the real life moon landing. The entire sequence on the moon is fantastic – little dialogue, very emotional, amazing camera work and it is a very well earned moment in the movie.

I’m seriously running out of things to say since I really have no problems with this movie besides the trailer for the movie which did a terrible job at showing off this near perfect masterpiece. I guess I could find some minor nitpicks if I thought about it but I really don’t want to. Here’s a first for this very mean grumpy complainer. Here’s our first 10/10 of 2018! (Doesn’t say much about the movies on offer this year, does it?) It’s the inaugural winner of the Blog Complainer Approved Seal – a reward that goes out to pieces of entertainment that have no faults or cracks or just work effectively at the job they are trying to accomplish.

So, as The Complainer who has nothing left to say, if you have not seen this movie you should immediately drop everything you’re doing and travel to the closest cinema.

Before signing off and all that, I’m going to give a quick shout-out to one of my kind followers plutorawr.  She sent me this nice poem for all of you to enjoy.

My dark angel you creep into my dreams
Tear open these scars on my heart and they bleed.
Your shadow is suffocating me
And yet you’re warm
Like home.

I should feel threatened,
I should run away
But I feel connected to you and I can’t turn away.

The lights calling to me,
Trying to save my soul.
But your darkness is caressing me,
And I like this hold you’ve got.

So come closer and let me feel your evil,
Drown me until I learn to breath underwater.

Thank you plutorawr for the great poem, if you have a hidden talent that you want to show off to people, besides your parents, the internet is definitely the place to start. I wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case. (I’m sorry, I can’t think of a funny quip to put here so I’m just going to mention that I can’t think of a funny quip to put here. Laugh it up if you haven’t tried it)

If you liked plutorawr’s poem go and check out her other posts because if you don’t I don’t get any brownie points.

Also if you want to contact me and want me to advertise your site or your latest Mazda product or whatever here’s my email: theblogcomplainer@gmail.com

That’s it for another review so this has been The Blog Complainer, Signing Out.