A dramatic slog

Rating: 5/10 (28 January 2019)

Damien Chazelle managed to make the story of Neil Armstrong's moon mission boring. Unless you are curious about how to make a story of a great human achievement into a plodding, depressing 2:20 dramatic slog don't waste your time on this film.
It was a biopic that made Armstrong and his wife (played by Ryan Gosling & Claire Foy) appear to be a joyless automatons. The film focused on negative aspects of their lives and paint them as deeply troubled by the death of their young daughter in the first scenes of the film, an event which plagues then throughout the rest of the years chronicled in the film (1961-1969).
Armstrong is highly competent, but seems to have no happiness or joy even when achieving great things. Foy's portrayal of Janet Armstrong is wooden except when she's expressing negative emotion in the direction of her husband. Both are good actors, I can only imagine they are playing the characters as instructed by Chazelle, who focuses screen time on death, funerals, anti-NASA protests, and primarily negative aspects of the whole process of getting man to the moon.
It was tough, but wow, someone must have cracked a smile at some point during the 8 years chronicled in the film.
On top of this, they paint Buzz Aldrin as a jerk, which seems unfair and is not supported by any accounts I have ever seen of the man. Some of the only emotion we see from Gosling's Armstrong is when he's basically telling Aldrin to shut up after he makes some ultra insensitive remark.
Read an op-Ed on Space.com op-ed by someone who knew Neil (John Logsden).... He hits several of the same points that I felt about the movie which just seemed "wrong" in watching it.
A key quote:
"Here is how he (Frank Borman, commander of the Apollo 8 mission) described Neil Armstrong: "Quiet, perceptive, thoroughly decent man . . . A little reserved, but when (you) get to know him, he has a very warm personality." The key phrase there, to me, is "get to know him." This is the Armstrong I came to know. It's a shame viewers of the film won't get that chance. I worry that in the years to come many will remember the film's unflattering characterization of Neil Armstrong rather than the warm, engaging person he in reality was."