Movie recommendation

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I finally saw the movie "First Man".  I usually do not enjoy aviation autobiography's because we all know the story anyway, but I enjoyed the movie.  It touches on the X15 which was shrouded in secrecy.  It is cool that Xplane11 has one to fly, my desktop wallpaper is from an Xplane11 flight I took to space with it.  The movie shows the problems that hard 24x7 work causes to marriage, like my road warrior work did to mine, fatally destroying it sad to say, work can kill relationships in a work world that demands loyalty to the job first, family second and God last.  Back to the movie, I felt it was well acted, anything with Ryan Gosling in it is, like his work in "Fracture" with Anthony Hopkins.  I feel it is well directed and understated, not overdone like the Right Stuff which went towards comedy a bit too much though still a good classic in its own right because of the Yeager and Glenn portrayals especially.  Spirit of St. Louis was another good movie, but that was a long, long time ago....

John

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

There’s some more feedback on the movie in the topic I started about it last year.

Personally I didn’t care for it too much and found it way to slow. Although the Right Stuff had parts that were over dramatic and not completely realistic, I found it to be much more interesting and entertaining. Even real documentaries on the Apollo mission are more entertaining than the First Man movie was in my opinion. 

It was actually the most disappointed I had ever been for a movie that I had been looking forward to for so long.

To this day I’ll watch The Right Stuff maybe once a year. The First Man movie was a one time deal for me. Glad you enjoyed it though.

 

 

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

Yeah, I have to agree that it wasn't ready for prime time.  Normally I'm a big RG fan, and this is the worst full production movie he ever made.  In fact, I'd wager the part just wasn't right for him as he came across even more boring as the film.  In fact, because I was such a buff of those days, well, I don't know.

Agonizingly slow with nothing to gain from the pulling teeth type event.

Maybe I didn't enjoy it because I'm military and used to a faster pace, or I was hyped about seeing it and it let me down. One of those, or both, I'm sure.

 

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

7 hours ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Agonizingly slow with nothing to gain from the pulling teeth type event.

Maybe I didn't enjoy it because I'm military and used to a faster pace, or I was hyped about seeing it and it let me down. One of those, or both, I'm sure.

 

I’d have to agree. There were some parts that were so slow that I actually had trouble keeping my eyes open. My wife was also let down as she’s an RG fan as well. She’s not interested in aviation or the history of the space program, but even she enjoyed The Right Stuff and even had enough interest to read up on Chuck Yeager and watch some documentaries about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs after watching the movie.

We saw it on the second day it was released, around 7:30 on a Sat and there were only about 15 people in the theater. My wife and I were surprised and thought it was a bad sign that hardly anyone was there.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I think the reason I liked the movie was because it was slow.  It may be an age related thing, I just do not like movies that push the story at you and dialog at you at a frenetic pace.  That mirrors life today, which is full of micromanagement everywhere you look.  I prefer the old way of life of the 60's,70's and 80's when we moved forward more gracefully, without cell phones glued to our ears, without data streaming into our heads every nanosecond that serves no purpose anyway.  Life is about family, and I like the movie in that it dwelt on his family.  There are two ways to live life.  We can either live to work, or work to live.  I prefer the latter.

Cactus521

[Chock 17,769]

I think complaints that First Man was slow paced miss the point of why it was edited that way. Personally, I thought First Man's pacing was brilliant, and here's why:

The slow pace of the movie prior to the moonshot worked well to convey the difficulty and slow meticulous tasks which ultimately led to the successful moon landing. It allied that to the calm meticulous nature of Neil Armstrong which was ultimately why he was chosen as mission commander. In this, it was true to the tale, and the man.

Whilst it might seem this would make it somewhat arduous to watch, it ended up rewarding you for doing that so you felt like you had been on that journey with them and this made the moon mission sequence work well for the viewer by putting you through a similar albeit shorter process to get to that point in the proceedings. I think that was an entirely deliberate editorial choice, and a brilliant one too. It made the final sequence a real edge of the seat experience.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

I just went back and skimmed through the movie... and noted that vast majority of scenes including Ryan Gosling were him simply staring into nothing.  LOL!

 

2 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

I think the reason I liked the movie was because it was slow.  It may be an age related thing, I just do not like movies that push the story at you and dialog at you at a frenetic pace.  That mirrors life today, which is full of micromanagement everywhere you look.  I prefer the old way of life of the 60's,70's and 80's when we moved forward more gracefully, without cell phones glued to our ears, without data streaming into our heads every nanosecond that serves no purpose anyway.  Life is about family, and I like the movie in that it dwelt on his family.  There are two ways to live life.  We can either live to work, or work to live.  I prefer the latter.

I can certainly understand that.  My having spent the majority of my adult life in military operations, my mind is accustomed to dealing with many moving parts all moving at a very fast pace.  Also in the mix is that many men in my generation and before where defined by their careers and (again, right or wrong) we set everything aside for our work and if you were military, especially if you were in an elite field, then the sacrifices where too many to put a book, in fact I'm comfortable with saving they were immeasurable by any traditional means.

With the above for foundation, astronauts of the era in which the film was portrayed were hard charging go-getters who focused almost exclusively on their work - they had to, as did many of the NASA engineers and other specialists.  So I guess what I'm saying is that I found the character that Ryan portrayed very hard to believe, and for me it flew in the face of interviews and documentaries I've seen that included and even focused on Neil Armstrong. I can't believe he often spent a great amount of time avoiding and not engaging people and instead just sat around staring into nothing, at least as often as shown in the film.  It didn't come across as him being reflective (which is supposed to happen AFTER something great), for me he came across as mentally retarded in those scenes (go back and watch them and one can't possibly disagree).

Regarding John's take on living to work or working to live... I understand both, have friends on both sides of that aisle.  I often look back at what I missed with my family, wife and son, but I know I accomplished a few things that enriched their lives and others in our country and though I certainly lost more than I can calculate or care to think about too often, I'd say it was worth it to the people in my country and in many other countries.  I chose a life of service, and that will have to be enough for me.  But of course I sometimes wonder if I'd chosen to focus on family instead of my mission, I'm human after all.

My very best wishes John, and my respect my friend.

 

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by DaveCT2003

[michal 44]

I don't regret seeing "First Man" but I absolutely hated a few things. If the Saturn V launch was so well done why they didn't bother to put the same level of effort into the Moon landing. The whole movie is centered on this event, there is hardly any movie left after the landing and yet when they approach for landing the terrain is so cartoonish, the cliffs are so steep, like Grand Canyon, there is a well documented documentary showing their last 2 minutes of approach, the terrain their overflew, the famous West Crater with huge boulders, everything is there, why not create a decent replica of that, it would not cost more, and by they way when they finally stepped on the Moon - the local terrain/landscape is done quite well. Another nasty IMHO thing are overblown vibrations, vibrations in X-15, vibrations inside Apollo command module during the launch, way too much, with these vibrations no one would be able to read any instruments and yet they did.

Edited January 19, 2019 by michal

[michal 44]

I was highly critical of "First Man" but went to see "Apollo 11" documentary that started playing yesterday in IMAX theaters. Wow!! It is a very skillfully edited compilation of never before seen footage, like they say - reality is often much better than any fictional account and it applies to this case. Running time 93 min. Highly recommended. Apparently it will play for only a week? 

Edited March 2, 2019 by michal

[John_Cillis 2,406]

On 3/2/2019 at 11:39 AM, michal said:

I was highly critical of "First Man" but went to see "Apollo 11" documentary that started playing yesterday in IMAX theaters. Wow!! It is a very skillfully edited compilation of never before seen footage, like they say - reality is often much better than any fictional account and it applies to this case. Running time 93 min. Highly recommended. Apparently it will play for only a week? 

Thanks for the heads up, while I recover from having been run over last night, a good movie might be a good bit of therapy.

John