First Man - 4 nominations

Visual Effects - Paul Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles and J.D. Schwalm

Production Design - Nathan Crowley (Production Design); Kathy Lucas (Set Decoration)

Sound Editing - Ai-Ling Lee and Mildred Iatrou Morgan

Sound Mixing - Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Ai-Ling Lee and Mary H. Ellis

First Man retells the story of NASA's early years and its attempt to land people on the moon.  It focuses on Neil Armstrong and his balancing of pushing toward a dream and the concerns and demands of his wife and family over that mission's dangerous nature.  There is an incredibly heroic and inspiring story in this film, and it's hard to know how much of what happened in the film is true.  In some ways, this is another film about humans pushing their limits to achieve incredible feats, but people died in the lead up to the success of this NASA mission, and so we have to ask ourselves (as we did in the nominated documentary, Free Solo), was the achievement worth the sacrifice?  First Man contends that indeed it was, and that families who lost astronauts in the name of exploration (um, AMERICAN exploration) did so to serve a greater ideal.

First Man was truly robbed of an Original Score nomination.  The music enhanced the experience of the film magically, and though I usually note that the achievement of a score is to enhance the film without calling attention to itself, in this case, the standout music put the final touches on this movie's magic.

As you know, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are the stuff of extraordinary war, musical, and science fiction films and First Man is none of those three.  But the technical elements, the dialogue, and the music came together so perfectly in this film, that these nominations were inevitable.  There was certainly talk of other possible nominations, particularly for Claire Foy who played Armstrong's no nonsense wife.  I was truly taken in by it all.