Questionable Creative Choices...

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2019)

First Man would've been vastly improved by having a different cinematographer... I understand they clearly wanted a visual aesthetic which would look like it was shot during the 1960s whilst also mirroring the practical & realistic visual effects of a Christopher Nolan movie but the final result sadly just didn't work; there were far too many unwarranted & really uncomfortably close close ups on character's faces / facial features during normal scenes & they relied far too heavily on ridiculous amounts of shaky cam - watching some sequences made me feel like I was having a seizure & it became distracting. By contrast, a better example of how to shoot a space epic? Watch Interstellar. Linus Sandgren could learn a lot from superior Hoyte Van Hoytema.
The rest of the movie was fine & Claire Foy gave an outstanding performance as Janet Armstrong - just a shame it was captured within really ugly camera angles.
Overall, technically impressive - the VFX shots were realistic & it had great production design etc. But I could never emotionally invest myself in the story as creative decisions throughout always took me out of it...