First Man Review: 8 Ups & 2 Downs

By Jack Pooley / October 12, 2018

Downs...

2. Too. Much. Shaky Cam.

The vast majority of Linus Sandgren's cinematography throughout the movie is handheld, and though this does lend the film an extremely intimate quality, it also sometimes goes a little overboard.

It's certainly appropriate that the expertly-staged space shuttle sequences feature lots of shaking, but it becomes more of a problem when basic dialogue set-ups have the camera violently swinging all over the place.

It proves a little distracting during some of the movie's more meaningful dialogues between Armstrong (Gosling) and his wife Janet (Foy) in particular, and clearly a little more restraint here would've gone a long way.