First Man: Ryan Gosling's abstract Apollo mission – discuss with spoilers

The biopic of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing has US patriots all fired up, but do Gosling and director Damien Chazelle achieve their objectives?

Damien Chazelle's film about the iron-jawed, ice-water-in-the-veins pilot and astronaut Neil Armstrong is a rocket pointed directly at the distant planet known as Awards Season. It ought to do well there, as its thrilling set-pieces, strong performances, dramatic score and sweeping emotions achieve escape velocity from typical biopic trappings.

You'd think a movie like First Man wouldn't have too many surprises; most people know that Apollo 11 landed on the moon and safely returned. (Some, like my late grandmother, think it was a hoax, but there's not much that can be done about that.) Yet there's a lot to rummage through in all this lunar dust. Chazelle and company make a lot of unusual choices. One of those choices got a little blown out of proportion into a quasi-controversy when "alt-right" bozos such as renowned troglodyte Dinesh D'Souza, repeated the bad faith argument that First Man didn't show the US flag. It's complete poppycock (I saw the movie; I saw the flag) but it is true that there is no typical, shot-from-below moment of a flagpole penetrating the alien soil in Michael Bay-esque slow motion. It's just there, in the background.