First Man (2018)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing    This is a really good film, better than I thought it was going to be.  Ryan Gosling gives a really restrained performance, which I liked, and I can see why Claire Foy was talked about for the Best Actress race.

Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) was the first man to walk on the moon.  But the path that led him to that end point was not a straight one.  The early NASA programs were experimental and dangerous, wracking up a high cost in labor, materials, and human lives.  The astronauts and their families faced incredible uncertainty balanced against the belief that what they were doing was necessary and important for the furthering of human knowledge.

More than any other film, I hope this wins for Sound Editing and Mixing.  You seriously feel like you are in a tin can being shot into space.  The walls rattle, metal groans, unidentified parts shriek and clatter, the engines roar, and then all is utter silence in the vastness of space.  It's astonishing.  I've never been so transported by sound effects alone.  Which is in no way a slight to the visuals.  The moon looks just as alien and forbidding as it must have looked to the first explorers.

It's a pity the human elements seem so lackluster.  Part of it is that Armstrong was a reticent man not prone to outbursts so he's kind of boring to watch and part of it is that we've seen variations on this theme in pretty much every space movie ever made.  Cory Stoll makes up for it as Buzz Aldrin, though.  This is absolutely worth watching and would make a great double feature with Apollo 13.