Gravity

Let's See:

Two of my past reviews were 127 Hours and Life of Pi. One was about a man pinned to a boulder for the whole movie, and the other was about a young man in a lifeboat with a tiger for most of the movie. Both were good movies, as is Gravity, about two people (and only them) surviving in space.

In the film's first shot, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are in space repairing the Hubble Telescope. Their shuttle, the Explorer, is destroyed by debris from a satellite. They have to find a way back to Earth.

That first shot is the film's first ten minutes. And that above paragraph is pretty much the whole movie.

Oh yeah, and it turns out that space is pretty harsh. Dr. Stone has to stay positive if she's to survive.

Director Alfonso Cuaron's space odyssey is an unusually small ninety-minutes. Those minutes go by pretty fast thanks to Cuaron and his co-editor, Mark Sanger. They're as thrilling as those movies that push through two hours.

Outer space, as photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, is pretty impressive. Sometimes claustrophobic, other-times expansive, the imagery is one of the best cinematic depictions of outer space. And it makes up for a lack of sound effects with a great score by Steven Price.

The film can get brutal at times, but the screenplay, by Cuaron and his son Jonas, has some comic relief. Much of it is from George Clooney's slick Kowalski...I should stop myself before I'm tempted to spoil.

As an exercise in visual effects, Gravity stays afloat. It's an Epic Fall Blockbuster that will surely be counted as a milestone of the medium. Whether in 3D or Flatscreen, it thrills the audience either way.