great visuals, otherwise lacking and quite cheesy

Rating: 6/10 (12 October 2013)

you may have heard about the wonderful visuals on display in Gravity and yes these might be worth the price of admission, but considering the amount of hype surrounding this film I expected it to have more depth and was surprised to see a basic and shallow blockbuster action movie
mainly Sandra Bullock's character came across to me as being very shallow going from extreme panic, to bark like a dog dejected woman, to ms motivated with no subtleties in between. It's as if she was abducted by aliens from a shopping mall and beamed into a space suit in orbit. i found her performance perfectly unbelievable
Clooney is... Clooney in a space suit and he reminded me of buzz lightyear
There were also some extremely cheesy moments, like the 3d tears, the bit where Bullock howls like a pooch, Clooney angel, and the very end of the film where we pan up Bullocks ms. universe body is quite cringe-worthy too
On a technical level I disliked the sound design in the movie. I'd heard from many audio people that the soundtrack was amazing, but it is very see it hear it throughout and the focus on hearing every breath Bullock takes becomes very grating after awhile. They could've established the claustrophobia and still taken some chances with the sound, instead it's turn this screw and hear a muted screw turn, and of course the customary post explosion tinnitus sound. All very predictable
(I'm no astrophysicist but I also found some of the science in the movie to be a little sketchy.. eg. the effects on the human body when exposed to a vacuum. I think Arnie was closer in Total Recall!)
All of the above obviously suited the film makers since they were clearly batting for a basic commercial blockbuster action movie with great 3d visuals to earn lots of dollars, which is what Gravity is