Gravity

My brother and I went to see "Gravity" this afternoon. I'm not a great movie reviewer, but I thought I'd share my thoughts about the movie. My thoughts will contain lots of SPOILERS! If you haven't seen the movie and you intend to do so, please skip this post for now.

Briefly, "Gravity" tells the story of two shuttle astronauts fighting to stay alive after satellite debris rips into the shuttle, killing the other astronauts and making the shuttle worthless. It is audaciously imagined and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from the screen for the nearly 90 minutes the movie ran. In fact, after the theatre had emptied, I stood in the aisle and stared hypnotically as the credits rolled past, still mesmerized by what I had seen.

Oddly, the movie doesn't hook you emotionally. The characters are not drawn to any great depth and the story is nearly non-existent. Instead, all of Cuarón's storytelling goes into drawing the viewer into space with the characters. For that reason alone I recommend seeing the 3D version, as it adds one more dimension of sensory overload to the experience. The camera almost never sits still, literally keeping the viewer off-balance the entire time. You feel the disorientation of the characters. When it does pull in tight to focus on one character, the background is usually reeling like mad. Adding to the sensory stimulation, Cuarón rarely allows the viewer to relax. The plot has very few 'slow' scenes, as the characters are drawn from one crisis to another with alarming rapidity. (I'm sure early drafts of the script and/or cuts of the movie had extra story to pad the movie out a bit, but more story would only have hurt Cuarón's vision.)

The two astronauts of the movie are played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Beyond the whining charm of her character in "Speed," I have never been a particular fan of Bullock's. She does well in this movie, however, breathing a little bit of life into a character who is little more than a pastiche of ideas. Clooney plays the affable cowboy he is practiced at, a friendlier version of his character from "Three Kings" or a saner version of his character from "The Men Who Stare at Goats." I wouldn't be surprised to see Clooney get a nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.

I enjoyed the movie's score quite a bit. However, because there are so many small sounds in the movie, the volume was far too high in our theatre, meaning the music crescendos were painful on the eardrums.

Go see this movie if: You are a fan of motion simulator rides like Star Tours or Soar.

Avoid this movie if: You suffer from motion sickness or you insist a movie have a story.