The dark side of the moon...77.5%

Rating: 8/10 (24 October 2013)

This is a highly unusual film to come out of America and be on mainstream release. It's pretty much what a bad day at the office would like for astronauts...and of course, it's pretty bleak. Hollywood 'names' George Clooney and Sandra Bullock star as astronauts orbiting Earth on a space shuttle. Disaster strikes. Who will live? Who will die? Will anyone survive?
Bullock looks very unglamorous in this movie...until she gets most of her gear off and then...man, is her next role as a world class athlete or gymnast or something? Don't tell me that she went all 'method' to play the part of an astronaut! Um, astronauts don't look so fit! Not sure if I actually saw her bum...could have sworn she had an anvil where her buttocks should be.
In favour of this movie is genuine tension as both the astronauts and their means of escape become endangered. I watched this in 3D and I actually blinked a few times as debris hurtled towards me. Bullock's character has the most fleshed out backstory (unlike her buttocks) which adds to the existential angst of the situation that they face and her will to survive.
One minor gripe I had about this film was during one scene where time is of the essence and Clooney's character is just very chatty with Bullock's character...despite mentioning to her the urgency of time. All the time he was talking to her and she wasn't actually heading where she should be going I kept thinking "Seriously? Come on! MOVE IT!".
There was an old scientific theory which posited that all of space was filled with "aether" (maybe last year I browsed a scientific magazine which had some speculative science that something akin to the concept may be revived...in "Scientific American"? I don't remember) and I just mention this to note the heavy use of symbolism in this movie. The astronauts floating about in the aether look rather like foetuses floating in amniotic fluid with an umbilical cord. There is an even more marked (yet subtle) image of Sandra's character floating inside a space station in a foetal position. These kinds of images suggest that there is some kind of deeper parallel being made by the film. Can't say that I put my finger on what it was - if it does indeed exist - I did wonder if maybe this was some kind of origin story for humanity...implying that our species had its origins in outer space and came to colonise Earth...which is actually a current hypothesis in physics, I believe...people like Pr. Paul Davies, I think, believing that the 'seeds of life' are present everywhere across the universe and so life may form wherever there is fertile ground to land on.
But then again, maybe the symbolism in the movie is just nice imagery without such speculation going on. Must also note how excellent the simulation of weightlessness in this movie is...it looks real.