Gravity // Film Review
Make some space in your calendar and go and see Gravity.
Space. The final frontier, has over the years, frankly become quite a crowded place. It all started a long, long, time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and ever since then we’ve had wars, treks, balls, races, ships, gates, planets, holes, monsters, ghosts, aliens – small and green and tall and blue… the list goes on, much like the infinite blackness of space itself. Not that we seem to mind - cinematic fascination with it seems to be, er, universal.
In Gravity, George Clooney plays the veteran astronaut to Sandra Bullock’s newbie. Whilst they are on a mission fixing an arm outside a space station in orbit around the earth, they get a message from ground control (Ed Harris) warning them about satellite debris. As bright 3D chunks of space-crap whizz past them (and at the audience), Clooney still cracks jokes – right up to the point where the rest of his and Bullock’s crew are killed, the arm they are attached to jerks loose and they end up tethered to the spinning wreckage with limited air and no contact with mission control – all in the one shot!
With Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) has made a tense, intelligent, science-driven epic that will have your pulse racing and your heart in your throat. There are no aliens, space cowboys or ray-guns - for most of it there are just two actors and no soundtrack, but the cinematography is amazing and Cuaron yet again leads the way with innovative shooting techniques and effects. The acting is superb – to put anyone else on screen with Bullock and Clooney would only mean less of them anyway, and why would you want to do that? Make some space in your calendar and go and see Gravity.
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