It was the summer of 1968. In May of the same year, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In June of the same year, presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War raged on. Throughout our nation, it was a summer of riots, protests and great unrest.
As astronaut Neil Armstrong took mankind's giant leap onto the surface of the moon 50 years ago, 650 million people watched and listened to the televised broadcast via the Houston Space Center.
By turns the intimate portrait of its elusive subject's inner life and a lavish look back at the sometimes tragic, ultimately triumphant race to the Moon, "First Man" (Universal), director Damien Chazelle's multidimensional profile of astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), is a splendid piece of moviemaking.
