What a Mess

Rating: 4/10 (26 November 2019)

This could have been a great film, but it was far from that.
This is another in the modern Hollywood vein of making a film/dramatisation of famous real-life events, this situation/story was a cracking one, the life of Neil Armstrong leading up to him walking on the moon. But instead the Director Damien Chazelle destroyed any chance of a good film !!
The main problem was the close-up and ultra-close-up filming, I have seen this elsewhere in movies and on TV, IT DOES NOT WORK!, all it does is annoy me because you don't get to see much, you need a wider viewpoint from the camera. The editing was also rubbish, it was poorly made.
I am not a fan of Ryan Gosling, having seen some of his early efforts, however I have to admit it was great acting from him, he played the part of the quiet spoken Neil Armstrong well, too well, I know NA was not a blabbermouth but he did speak more than Ryan portrayed him, but that is my only quibble with the part, other than that it was great. The other actors also did a fine job, I would be interested in hearing what they thought about what their work turned into ?.
I have read other reviews of this movie and most of them refer to how boring it was, I don't think it was that boring (some people just have the attention span of a Gnat), however it did seem to drag on for a while in parts (mostly just annoying with the camera work), apart from the annoying ultra close-ups the flying/space scenes were good but the family scenes were a bit lacking, they needed more dialogue, I am sure that NA spoke to his wife a whole lot more than in this film.
If you want to see a good movie of a similar vein, Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks is the one, not this one, only watch this if you are doing an History major at college.
I gave it a 4 out of 10, but only for the acting and true story, if the acting was also poor it would of got a 2 from me. Ryan Gosling gets a 9 for his acting, Damien Chazelle a Zero out of 10 for his direction. I just hope someone else (with any other Director) makes a film about the first moon landing, it can't possibly be worse than this.