Reviews

The pros: great production, acting and cinematography. The score and direction were overall very good of course but a bit quirky at times.

The cons: not many really but editing and spacing were a bit off to me. Also I thought that the dialogue was a bit off and awkward at times too . I didn't think the continuity was great as the progression of events relating Napoleon 's conquests were not well depicted.

Joachim Phoenix's performance was a bit odd but maybe that was the way Napoleon was??? I didn't come away with a good sense of his leadership skills and how he really motivated people to do what they actually did.

However when comparing this movie to all the other formula based moviemaking, this movie stands pretty tall. It was obvious that an enormous amount of work and detail went into making this movie.

There are so many great stories in history to tell. Let's hope someone else besides Ridley Scott picks up the baton at some point.

The good: score, cinematography, editing. The OK: the acting, the bad: most of the characters are annoying especially the girl who is almost entirely snarky and bratty and is as foul mouthed as any sailor was. The direction and dialogue is tedious and formulaic like so many mini series these days. It's almost like they were written by bots.

It's of course still a zombie movie that has just enough action to keep you interested. The zombies seem to come out of holes in the ground and it gets weirder. The story moves back and forth seemingly as slow as possible with very few action scenes but plenty of pointless talkie scenes. I give it a 6... barely watchable and feeling somewhat taken in.

I must assume the directors are under orders to make it painfully slow. They also add the kooky music to make it seem off beat ala tarantino which is now becoming mor and more cliche. Trying hard to make a comedy out of it at times.

The acting and sets are good but the story is pretty thin and dragged out. So many obvious questions go unanswered but I also think that's intentional.

The characters for the most part are pretty annoying and quirky. I'm not really sure what the point is, maybe Black Mirror goes west.

However it is still intriguing and Josh Brolin is is good but I think they should start paying us to watch these shows.

It's not a semi-comedy like Armageddon but with actors like Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman and Elijah Woods as well as superior directoring and scoring, Deep Impact is hard to beat.

I wasn't crazy about Tea leoni's performance but with other fine supporting cast members like Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, it's really a pretty darn good disaster movie.

It's also very well paced with minimal slow scenes. Of course it's farcical and yes there are holes in the plot and Leoni's character is really annoying, but it's still very watchable. In addition , the script isn't nearly as corny as Armageddon.

It's like a Black Mirror episode strung out way too long. Even the talents of Christopher Walken and John Turrturo could not save it for me. The story concept was interesting but the script was too quirky and not very clever. Way to slow.

I tried to give a good chance but lasted about halfway through and that wasn't easy.

Is this Spielberg's worst? It seems as though he's was trying to make every character as annoying as possible. Of course the effects and score were great but the annoying characters were a needless distraction and for the most part ruined the movie for me.

What a mess. Oh it must be an artistic mess though. Apparently this director doesn't have a clue on how to tell a story. It must take a lot of discipline to take a good story and "untell" it in the way she has done. I personally think it's the cheap way out. Condensing a book into a film is extremely difficult but this is the easy way out. Quirkiness does not necessarily equal quality. To say it convoluted is an understatement. What a waste of a good story.

I suppose if you are under 14 years old you could accept it. But then again you wouldn't "remember" the 80's tacky pop music that saturates almost every scene. But oh yes don't forget it's a "slow burn" where almost every character is either annoying or wacky or both. I'm sorry but I don't buy it.

Apparently German TV series filmmakers now have the "slow burn" disease. How else are you going to fill a season (or two or more)? Maybe draw it out with endless ten second meaningless scenes with really spooky music. I often wonder how "24" did it. Seems like a dream of so long ago. Has there been a single fast paced TV series made since. So tired of the so called "Slow Burn" formula. I think it's really a cop out for mediocre script writing.

I think it played more like tragedy rather than triumph. I understand Neil Armstrong was a more introverted individual but I think they went overboard in this aspect of his portrayal. Kind of a downer movie overall for me.

As a Space exploration enthusiast who actually saw many Apollo launches from Cape Kennedy and thoroughly enjoyed The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, First Man Seemed kind of dark and moody and emphasized the negatives much more than the positives about both his life as well as the space program.

Technically speaking, the movie was produced at a very high level. I did however think the score seemed a little odd at times but the acting and other aspects of the film's production were good..

In the long run I doubt this film will be re-run and sold on DVD to the level that the aforementioned space films have been as it seemed like to play like a smaller moody film about a hugely successful event.

Pros - Good acting, good directing, good cinematography, good soundtrack, good editing, good story... Most of the things movies are rated on at the Academy awards.

So what's the problem here? As it turns out, not much. The critics complain that the story/script is convoluted. Well that's the way the book is. Dan Brown writes that way; jumping around as most chapters are only a few pages long. I don't really like that style myself as nobody would tell a story that way verbally but it's a popular style these days.

The Usual Suspects was convoluted. So was the Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon and many other highly rated (and not so highly rated) movies.

This movie reminded me of the Nicolas Cage National Treasure movies but not nearly so silly. The critics have their darling directors and darling movie genres. Non-comic book adventure and historical movies productions are certainly not among them. Just sit back and enjoy the show. It's classic movie escapism.

This is most certainly not a movie for everyone. No superheroes, no jiggly camera tricks, just movie making craftsmanship of the highest order. If you don't like historical dramas or don't like museums or don't understand the craft, then you are likely not going to see any value in it.

However it's an epic true story of human endurance and the will to live. The realism, the cinematography, the score, great cast and crew all sewn together artfully by the director.

It's just too bad that more people just can't appreciate good historical movie-making anymore. A sign of the times i guess.

Very high quality production with top notch direction, cinematography, scoring, set design, editing. Acting was good overall as well. Oh and let's not forget it's an epic tale of adventure.

Quality film making just doesn't really count for much anymore. So much is taken for granted now. It's really happening in all the arts. Quality, craft and workmanship apparently have so little value and historical dramas are almost always panned almost from the get-go. It's the age of superheroes and superficiality and it continues to get worse and worse every year.

Kudos to Ron Howard and the crew for a great effort and a pox on the multitude of clueless critics who couldn't (direct, act, edit, design, etc.) their way out of a wet paper bag.

In my opinion, this movie certainly has many positives but unfortunately has also has many negatives. To start off the original story was both remarkable and compelling. There was plenty of material there to work from without much need for embellishment. Overall the acting throughout the film was generally quite good especially the acting of Chiwetal Ejiofor. I thought his performance in many ways kept the movie grounded and more realistically compelling. I also thought the cinematography and period set designs were also very good.

On the other hand there were several aspects of the film that for me just didn't work well which is why I could not rate the movie any higher than I did. Steve McQueen may end of being a great director but I feel he is just too reliant on gimmicks and cliché directorial techniques. For example, some the flash-back, flash-forward segments were confusing and unnecessary, especially the micro back and forth scenes where he was actually being abducted. I don't know what point he was trying to make there at a time when the continuity of the scene should have been clear and instead was unnecessarily fragmented and confusing.

Use of the long drawn out face shots and close-ups also seemed pointless and just served to slow the pace of the film down. There were also just too many things in the movie that were not explained either at all or well enough. Examples of such are: where did Brad Pitt's character come from? He just all of the sudden was there with very little if any character background information or purpose. The time element was also blurred. The film's title implied that this all took place over 12 years. You never got the feeling that 12 years had passed. The main characters appearance didn't seem to change much if at all until makeup people sprinkled some Gray dust on Solomon's head at very end. There are other examples. I thought Michael Fassbender's portrayal of a lunatic plantation owner was way over the top as the character would have more likely been committed to an insane asylum than a owner of a working farm.

The score by Hans Zimmer seemed rather strange at times as well. I am a big Hans Zimmer fan but there were moments where I felt the music would have been more appropriate for War of the Worlds than for 12 Years a Slave. I also felt that some of the costumes were a bit over the top and too formal.

In summary, I think the film would have much better if the director would have just gotten out of the way and let the very compelling and tragic story and great actors carry the load.