Houston - We Have a No-Go

Rating: 3/10 (30 January 2014)

I love Sandra Bullock and George Clooney but this film leaves me gasping for air much like when Sandra reaches the ISS. Let me say this, the special effects and props are extremely well done hence the 3 stars, however there is absolutely no authenticity to the way a NASA mission is flown. Bullock and Clooney are flying Shuttle mission STS-157 and Clooney being the Commander knows nothing about her background, where she is from, does she have a family - it's like the day of the launch NASA saw they had an empty seat and started asking people if they would like to fly today and Bullock took them up on it. Everything that can possibly go wrong in this movie does for the crew. When attempting to escape in the Chinese capsule she uses the Eeny, meeny, miny, moe method to select what buttons and controls will power up the command module -- and luckily she gets it right from undocking all, the way through re-entry and splashdown - it's just amazing her prowess at selecting Chinese and Russian marked controls. I used to fly in the Air Force and have doggedly followed our Space Program all through the years so maybe that's why I couldn't handle the total lack of technical precision the story followed. I found technical content of this movie to be 0 for 10. About 2/3 of the way through this movie I was hoping for some space junk to take me out. Sorry but I was very disappointed in this one. Best Picture and Best Actress? Not by a long shot. To even nominate this one does dis-service to the films that have actually earned these awards.