Armstrong

Armstrong

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Armstrong (2019) Sci Fi Adventure Biography (1h 40m)

Dramatic, moving and insightful, Armstrong tells the definitive life story of Neil Armstrong: from his childhood in rural Ohio, through aerial combat in Korea, to his first steps on the Moon - and the unwanted celebrity status that ensued.

Neil Armstrong became NASA's most famous astronaut when his small step and giant leap changed the world forever on July 20 1969. Famously reticent about his accomplishments he preferred to focus on the team that helped to get him on the Moon rather than his own success. This new documentary features never seen before footage from Armstrong's own home movies and insights from those who flew with him and knew him best. From the producers of Spitfire and The Last Man on the Moon.

Neil Armstrong’s words narrated by Harrison Ford. Featuring breath-taking NASA footage, re-mastered archive material and never-before-seen home movie footage, this intimate and often surprising documentary, tells the incredible untold story of a determined family man who became a reluctant world icon.

Armstrong also includes major interviews with his family, an exceptional cast of fellow astronauts and aviators, those who knew him in his youth and later life, together with newly filmed sequences at some of the key locations from his life story.

REVIEW: Time Out says:

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‘It’s in the nature of the human. We’re required to do these things, just as salmon swim upstream.’ So says iconic space salmon Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon. Half a century on from his famous ‘small step’, this starry-eyed, cradle-to-grave doc has a go at finding out what made him tick.

There are talking-head interviews with old Air Force comrades and fellow astronauts, and insights from his sister Janet (as kids, their parents tied cowbells to them to keep track of their movements). As a visual experience, ‘Armstrong’ is nowhere near as awe-inspiring as the recent ‘Apollo 11’ – another film released to mark the half-centenary of the moon landing – though it does boast Harrison Ford’s laconic narration of Armstrong’s lyrical diaries as a USP.

But Ford also serves as a reminder that Armstrong was no magnetic Han Solo type. From his upbringing in the Ohio boondocks to his air-ace exploits during the Korean War to his scientific skillset at Nasa, he’s a straight arrow who wore his heroism at zero gravity. ‘Armstrong’ fails to fill that charisma gap by delving into the tougher stuff around the death of his daughter Karen (the subject of Damien Chazelle’s underrated ‘First Man’) and the end of his marriage. Both, frustratingly, are zipped past. It’s all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making.

REVIEW: Armstrong

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Matt Zoller Seitz - July 13, 2019 - www.rogerebert.com

Devotees of films about the U.S. space program will need to do a thought experiment to immerse themselves in “Armstrong,” David Fairhead’s documentary about the life and mind of Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon.

The movie is sleek, smart, and reasonably thorough, and it offers the enticement of never-before-seen home movies provided by Armstrong’s family. But it can’t really stand out from the flood of material released to cash in on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, because it arrives on the heels of two daring efforts, Damien Chazelle’s “First Man” and Todd Douglas Miller’s “Apollo 11.” The former used subjective filmmaking techniques to illustrate the constricted mentality of Armstrong, who experienced unprecedented elation and deep sorrow (particularly over the death of his young daughter Karen, who died of a brain tumor when she was just two) but could not express it due to his social conditioning. “Apollo 11” took a more panoramic view (or mosaic, considering all the split-screens on display), showing that Armstrong was one of hundreds of people laboring to get an American spacecraft onto the lunar surface, and reconstructing the entire endeavor to transform it into a spectacular sound and light show for moviegoers.

“Armstrong,” in contrast, is far more traditional, using the moon mission as a present-tense framing device it can periodically return to. The flashback material starts at the beginning, with Armstrong’s childhood, then follows him on to combat duty as an Air Force pilot in Korea, then on to an impressive career as a test pilot, then finally rejoining the space program, where Armstrong suppressed deep personal trauma and made history.

The filmmaker gets a surprising number of important people from Armstrong’s life on record, considering that many of them are eighty or older and have been heard from elsewhere. The most moving is his widow Janet, who tells charming stories of their courtship and early years. Harrison Ford reads personal writing by Armstrong, much of which has never been used in a film before. But his warm yet unsentimental voice—while pleasing to the ear, and evocative of so many heroic movie roles—clashes with the more ordinary voice of the real Armstrong, as heard in archival footage. This is a thorough and respectable work, but not an inspired one. With a few exceptions, it doesn’t give you much that you can’t get from other documentaries about Armstrong and the space program, or from reading a decent nonfiction book.

Credits:

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Narrator: Harrison Ford

Director: David Fairhead

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 12, 2019, Limited (USA)

Release Date (Streaming): Jul 12, 2019

Producers: Gareth Dodds, Keith Haviland

Tagline: "The mission you know. The man you don't."

Genre: Documentary, Biography, Sci-Fi, Space Adventure, Narrative Documentary

Written by: Mark Armstrong

Music by: Chris Roe

Editor: Paul Holland

Original Language: English

Cinematography: Tim Cragg

Exec. Producers: Jim Hays, Mark Stewart

Studios: Tin Goose Films, Haviland Digital, Mark Stewart Productions Ltd, Hays Films, Gravitas Ventures

Distributor: Gravitas Ventures

Countries: UK, USA

Language: English

Alternative Titles: 암스트롱, Армстронг, 阿姆斯特朗, Armstrongas, Neil Armstrong - Held wider Willen

Trivia: Near the start, a shot of the cinema in Wopakoneta Ohio, (Neil Armstrong's birthplace) is screening First Man.

Cast: Neil Armstrong, Janet Armstrong, Michael Collins, Charlie Duke, Frank Borman, Chris Kraft, Gerry Griffin, June Hoffman, Rick Armstrong, Mark Armstrong.

Ratings: IMDb 7.0

Quotes: Michael Collins: "A lot of people criticized Neil because he didn't quote "get out and sell the program", but I think he was much more effective in his quiet way."

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Keywords: nasa, biography, space, astronaut, apollo program

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Review by Cal

"Where do I even begin? How do I even begin? My heart hurts, and no, I totally did not cry. Honest.

"Meet Neil Armstrong, an Ohio farm boy who dreamt of life in aviation only to end up being strapped into a tin can and landing on the lunar surface with it — being the first man to walk on the moon was surely a matter of life and death — and, as expected, earning the unwanted fame that he resented so much in the end because of how badly it affected him and his family’s life; he didn’t want to be a celebrity. Although I enjoyed apollo 11 a bit more, believe it or not, this documentary did in fact make me emotional as it illuminates not just his luminous triumphs but also the profound chasms of personal loss and introspection.

"Fairhead’s directorial acumen transforms archival footage into a reverie, a place where time folds upon itself, allowing past and present to converse in a dialect known only to those who dare to dream. here, we delve deeper into the personal life of my beloved, my favourite introverted, stoic, reserved, and nerdy engineer (who people might label as ‘boring’); a man whose footprints on the moon serve as an eternal reminder of what humanity can achieve when it dares to dream beyond the horizon. hearing stories from people who knew Neil personally felt unreal and I especially loved the Mike Collins feature, although i have to say that the lack of buzz aldrin in this documentary should be illegal — but knowing buzz; well, you get it, buzz is buzz, so maybe it’s better off that way.

"God, I love Neil Armstrong so much. nobody understands same old Neil the way I do, and this documentary means the whole world to me; it was out of this world."

User Review: 10/10

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"Great Documentary"

"I remember the entire American space program well. I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school when Armstrong led the Apollo moon landing. I'd been following the space program since the early days of Mercury, through Gemini and on. This is a fantastic look into one of the key members and probably the single most important moments in the American space program, and it shows the human side to these men. You have got to see this documentary. It's truly great."

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Gravitas Ventures (United States, 2019)(theatrical)
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  • USA - July 12, 2019
  • United Kingdom - July 12, 2019
  • Ireland - July 12, 2019
  • Australia - September 12, 2019
  • New Zealand - November 7, 2019
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100 mins
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