Dull "First Man" hovers aimlessly in limbo

When I first heard that Damien Chazelle, that boy-wonder filmmaker of such exciting, innovative movies as Whiplash and LaLa Land was directing First Man - a fact-based account of man's first trip on the moon - I was mildly skeptical.  In the last few decades, Hollywood has churned out its fare share of outer space astronaut dramas (Apollo 13, The Astronaut Farmer, Gravity, to name just a few), and for First Man to be at all relevant - especially given Chazelle's high expectations from here on in every time he steps behind the camera - it would have to be quite a spectacle.  Unfortunately, the movie arrives with a dull less significant than a pancake on a plate.

As Neil Armstrong, that monumental astronaut who uttered the now legendary "It's a small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" inspirational words as he stepped on the lunar surface back in 1969, Ryan Gosling sleepwalks through the role like a man well aware that he passed on better scripts than this one in order to re-team with his LaLa Land auteur.  He appears bored in the role, because he's too talented an actor to play this charmless of a part; Neil Armstrong is not fascinating enough of a character to be worthy of nearly two-and-a-half hour (seriously, why the fuck is this movie this long???) sleep inducing "epic".  Even Claire Foy, that charismatic actress of Netflix's superb series The Crown, looks to just be going through the motions, recycling the same house-wife worrisome tendencies as Kathleen Quinlan did in Apollo 13 some 23 years ago.

Don't get me wrong: First Man is not a bad movie, not by any means.  But in an over-saturated, late year Hollywood movie surge, it comes across as way too monotonous, and at least thirty minutes too long.  Gosling's Armstrong may have walked on the moon, but First Man never reaches the heavens its trailers promised it would.
C

"Middlewest's" teenage angst is at front and center

Abel, the young protagonist at the forefront of writer Skottie Young's and illustrator Jorge Corona's new comic book series Middlewest, is a scrawny teenager dealing with several personal issues.  For one, his dad's an angry, alarm-clock-throwing patriarch whose wrath the boy feels firsthand when he oversleeps his Saturday morning's paper route routine.  Abel's friends, a trio of video-game-playing, bicycle-riding shoplifters, also pressure him into stealing from the local convenience store.  And then there's The Wind, an arch-enemy the likes of Superman's Lex Luthor, a towering monstrosity who pierces him through his chest (after which he emerges with only a golden heart symbol on his T-shirt), and promises to be a long-term nemesis and a serious thorn in young Abel's side.

This first episode of Middlewest is instantly engaging, and full of imaginative, visionary artwork by Corona, which is complimented by the coloring of Jean-Francois Beaulieu.  Young promises to keep surprising us in the ensuing issues, and even though he doesn't answer every question we may have (who, exactly, is Abel's pet fox, and why is it able to talk?), this serial seems poised for awe and wonder, and perhaps it's leading to the same thundering conclusion as Image's recent God Country series.  The storm has just began, and I can't wait to see its path of destruction.
A-