Just came out of the theater. Well...that was interesting!

Main problems I found with the movie boils down to:

Extreme close up = emotion!
Shaky cam = realism!
Long awkward pauses = introspective....and please consider us for an Oscar

Seriously though, don't watch this movie in IMAX...I got motion sickness from the extreme closeups (close enough to see the actor's pores) with shaky cam.

The shaky cam becomes ridiculous in the flight/action scenes. I've flown in a 900lb LSA through turbulence and have been on an airliner where the turbulence threw the plane so bad a stewardess broke her ankle...but this is something else. I feel like I'm taking part in an exorcism!

The movie itself was okay; the ending partially (spoiler: they land on the moon) partially makes up for the slow pacing in the beginning. Suppressing your urge to walk out in the first 30 minutes will yield rewards...kind of. Without giving anything away, I just felt that the movie lacks a heart: The excitement of the space race, the camaraderie between the astronauts, the teamwork that going to the moon was this monumental undertaking....just isn't there.

With this I feel like that The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and the series From the Earth to the Moon were superior in every way. In the last one, when Apollo 1 happened, you mourned Grissom, White, and Chaffee with the rest of the cast. Here you really only get to know Ed White, and there just isn't any sentiment beyond "well, that sucks!" and "this is dangerous!"

PS: On the subject of flags, Old Glory is literally plastered everywhere. There is a scene of a kid literally hoisting up the Stars and Stripes on a flagpole on his porch...which made me chuckle after reading this thread. Leaving out planting the flag on the moon doesn't feel out of place. That and neither does leaving out a scene where Eagle's exhaust blows the flag down when she leaves. There is also a brief shot on the moon with the flag already planted.