Gravity is visually impressive, but lacking in pretty much every other area

Rating: 3/10 (23 March 2014)

Gravity, this is all I remember hearing about earlier this year. It was nominated for a whole host of Oscars and managed to win 7 Oscars. I think it fair to say that one would expect to see a film that at the very least would be 'reasonably good'. However, when the film ended I didn't even think that it was OK.
I think the main problem lay with Clooney and Bullock. They didn't share particularly good on screen chemistry. Clooney's character was particularly annoying; every 5 minutes he mentioned wanting to beat some guy's record for Space Walking. OK we get it, it was quite funny the first time, but do we have to keep hearing it over and over again? The dialogue generally was dreadful between Bullock and Clooney. I think the dialogue was meant to come across as 'playful', but I just found it 'cheesy and 'cringeworthy'. Clooney's character was a creep and I just found him really annoying. There is one scene where Bullock is trying to board an alternative space station after their space station is destroyed by flying debris. She tells Clooney that she is low on oxygen, but yet Clooney continues talking to her and asking stupid questions like 'Ryan? That's a funny name for a girl'. Small tip, if someone's low on oxygen, it's probably best that they conserve their oxygen levels by not talking a lot. There are other inconsistencies such as Clooney's character disappearing without any reason and then only appearing later as an hallucination (although truth be told I was relieved that his character disappeared as I couldn't have stomached him throughout the film).
For the second half of the film, it's left to Sandra Bullock to carry the film. In fairness to her, she does a reasonable job, but she was always battling against a rubbish script. What was all that about when she was howling like a dog? That seemed to go on forever.
If you take out the spectacular effects and impressive cinematography, you are ultimately left with a film that is badly scripted, poorly acted (in the case of Clooney, I thought Bullock did an OK job) and worst of all boring. There was very little in the way of story and no real reason to care for any of the characters.
This film won Oscars in the following areas; Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects. In other words, all style and no substance which perfectly sums up this film. However, at the BAFTA's it won the award for Best British Film (surely this was fixed or a sympathy vote).