Super special effects, weak story and dialog

Rating: 7/10 (6 October 2013)

In segments, Gravity has marvelous special effects--truly a remarkable achievement. The weak parts of the movie are the contrivances that link these segments together, along with unbelievably bad dialog. (Maybe someone will be brave enough to register the contrivances formally as "goofs" here on IMDb?)
No way could astronauts from the shuttle ever reach the International Space Station, but Gravity asks us to believe both this could happen and that an astronaut could then go on to reach a Chinese space station, too. These objects just don't orbit anywhere--ANYWHERE!!!!--near close enough to each other to make these events even remotely possible. Not only are their orbits vastly different in altitude and trajectory, it would be highly unlikely for them all to be near each other in the same orbit. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Gravity also asks us to believe that the orbit of the space debris intersected with that of the shuttle and was synchronized with it.
No way could Ryan Stone figure out how to operate a Soyuz capsule in a few seconds of reading the manuals. No way could Ryan Stone figure out how to operate the Chinese capsule just by poking around.
Of lesser failures: Space debris traveling 20,000 miles an hour relative to an observer is not going to be visible except *possibly* as an indistinct cloud that passes by so fast the "observer" won't know what hit them.
For all of the CGI effort, I had hoped the Earth would look more realistic and (naturally) beautiful.
In closing, the special effects were great but the weak story relied on too many absurd contrivances and the script contained no redeeming dialog (sorry, George). On balance: 7 stars.