First Man

I don't know what to make of space travel.

Would I like to travel to space?

Yes.

Would I like to explore space?

Yes.

Would I like to meet alien lifeforms?

Yes.

Do I wish extraterrestrial animals were featured more prominently on Star Trek?

Definitely yes.

It seems like an awfully expensive trip though, and since money hasn't been replaced as it has on Star Trek, in the Federation anyway, I would rather see trillions of dollars used to clean up the oceans, and feed the world's poor, and promote birth control worldwide, and proactively fight climate change.

Given the current state of the geopolitical scene, I unfortunately can't see any of those things happening soon, or at least until a cataclysmic environmental disaster dismally shakes things up.

I imagine if there was a God, and he or she did return, her or his first act would be to force us to clean up the planet.

While spending most of his or her time chillin' with dolphins.

However, I suppose if that happened the religious right would try to kill God.

Instead of just recycling things, consuming less, embracing flex-time, and marketing disposable containers.

I think I got that idea from South Park.

The science of space travel, the practical theoretical brilliance of the mathematicians, engineers, scientists, and technicians who managed to land a space craft on the moon, is still compelling nevertheless, perhaps the most risky unparalleled ingenious voyage ever hypothesized, even more important than whatever Donald Trump had for breakfast today, which I'm sure will intrigue historians and political scientists for upcoming untold millennia.

First Man doesn't focus on the math though, choosing rather to intently examine the brave astronauts who risked their lives to pioneer space travel, and they really did risk their lives when you consider how experimental the space program was, and rushed, incredibly brilliant no doubt, but still experimental and rushed, would you like to fly this ship we just made and aren't really sure about, not across the ocean, but into the stars themselves, and courageously embrace eternity with the fleeting awe of starstruck munificence?

True daring.

Yes.

It's a sure and steady meaningful account of the Armstrongs, beginning with the tragic death of their first daughter, and ending after Neil (Ryan Gosling) lands on the moon.

Mr. Armstrong is presented as an introverted somewhat cold yet loving man who lost a lot after Karen (Lucy Stafford) passed, but still remained a hard-working devoted husband.

Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy) struggles with the realities of being an astronaut's wife, when so many husbands aren't coming home, and the film reasonably showcases her frustrations at the rare moments when she presents them, her logical suggestions embraced by her husband, as the two practically exemplify self-sacrificing commitment and understanding.

First Man covers a long period of time but its snapshots are well chosen.

It's not overflowing with emotion or exclamation or patriotism, it's a much more sombre illustration of achievement that depicts determination objectively.

The events showcased within patiently generate their own significance while crafting a brave narrative that's much more familial than national.

I wouldn't have included only one black character as a voice of protest though, especially considering the resilient African Americans who worked on the space program, some of whom were poetically illuminated by Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures, brilliant minds given deserved respect.

Nonetheless, First Man's temperate, generally formal calculus still makes you feel like you're really there, landing on the moon, taking steps in the most otherworldly of environments.

That we've visited this side of the galaxy.

I've heard Madagascar's pretty wild too.

I really felt like I was there, checking things out, wandering around, collecting samples.

I think we should clean up this planet first before heading to Mars or beyond.

I have the utmost respect for the people who risk their lives travelling to space though.

And the math that makes it all possible.

Imagine your team thought all that up and was right.

Too bad space travel's so expensive.

Although I've heard hemp can be used for just about anything.

Even to make fuel.

And it grows like a weed.

So it likely doesn't require pesticides.

Damn.

*Okay, I suppose there's room for ambiguity by writing, "rivetingly so, 😏", so I took it out, to avoid confusion. In my head I thought, "wait, use the word 'rivetingly,' you rarely use that word because you think it's used too often and people will obviously understand that and know that you're being facetious, because everyone knows that's the reason why you rarely use that word." After heading out for a bit, I realized no one could possibly understand that besides me, and rushed home after my appointment to correct my error.

Gravity

Trauma's debilitating cloaked severity haunts Gravity's heroine as destructive debris and interstellar circumstances threaten her very survival, necessitating the delivery of split-second correct decision making where the slightest miscue will accelerate her demise.

Her oxygen supply is running low.

George Clooney (Matt Kowalski) doesn't make it.

Perdition rests in the flames.

Of cherished, bygone, days.

The immediacy of her isolated predicament and its associated inanimate malevolence prevents her conscious reflexivity from being able to divert periodic onslaughts of asphyxiating plush, the situation requiring simultaneous internal and external synthesized orchestrations for her reliable future to independently portend.

The film's action reliably and boisterously builds as the bright and beautiful Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) approaches its climax.

Couldn't help but think of the ending of the first Alien film, and that Gravity is somewhat of a gem amongst science-fiction considering that it poignantly and thought provokingly stuns throughout, providing a brilliant exemplar of feminine strength, without introducing a bloodthirsty monster.

Science-fiction more concerned with the beauty of life than gruesome death?

That stands out.

The Master

His personality trailing behind, obliviously, inquisitively and contendedly basking in the wake, quietly lounging in his own residual perpetual motion, with a sun he fails to see warmly beating down on his inebriated candour, Freddie Quell's (Joaquin Phoenix) proclivities for the peculiar lead to transformative miscues while the narrative which he inhabits, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, derisively lambastes its own nostalgic attachment to film's longing for nostalgic attachments (through its initial choice of music).

Mr. Quell's sense of buoyancy has been quasi-permanently kept afloat due to his wartime experience, as has his creative knack for improvisationally concocting alcoholic beverages.

He also seeks partnership.

Fortunately, he stows away on a ship by chance which has been rented by a carefree spirit (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd) and his followers, many of whom share his desire to circumvent sobriety.

They have taken things one step further, though, having devotedly conjured a flexible theoretical fundamental foundation, whose profits have secured a fantastic incorruptibility.

As these two tinkerers intersect, pseudoestablished faith-based charlatanism attempts to absorb obstinate itinerant (restrained, undirected, generally harmless) epicurean anarchy through a series of mind tricks, the confident modest inclusive yet principled performance expertly executed by Mr. Hoffman in their first obligatory interaction sophisticatedly counterbalanced by Joaquin Phoenix's focused resistant exactitude.

As Freddie is lured in, the film's structure attempts to grab hold of its audience's recalcitrance and transfer it deep within its hallucinatory consciousness, as if it's relying on the sheer conviction of its form alone, regardless of what form it takes, to transcribe potential transgressions of the post-modern through personal investments of hesitant, guilt-ridden trust, incipiently causing a cult to appear happy-go-lucky, and attempting to internally harness a distilled independent rationality.

The best American film I've seen so far this year.

Amy Adams puts in a great performance too.