A good movie, but not a great one

Rating: 8/10 (8 October 2013)

I guess I should be clear about which Gravity I saw. I saw the "IMAX Experience" 3D version.
(I wish the cinema had been as clear about which IMAX I would be seeing. In the rust-belt Canadian city of Windsor, IMAX apparently means "standard movie theatre plus reclining seats and oversize goggles". I'll try not to let my disappointment with this Cineplex "IMAX" theatre affect my review of the film.)
I'm told the film was shot in 3D, but not in IMAX. I was not wowed by the 3D in this film. It's no Avatar, and even the up-converted Titanic had superior 3D feel. If you see this at home in 2D, you will not be missing anything.
I think the film is appropriately named Gravity, even though it's not really about physical gravity (until the final scene). Sometimes popular astrophysicist Tyson takes things a little literally. It's also about life and death, and the meaninglessness of life's struggle, which are pretty serious (i.e. grave) concepts.
I wish more time had been spent introducing the characters. It seemed a shortcut to just start in space. I wanted to meet these people (and the others) as they were on Earth, and ride up with them. Budget cuts, I guess.
But I think the film is probably the most realistic (for what it's worth) depiction of low-earth-orbit space that has been shown to large audiences in North America. Nevertheless, when I compare it with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicted a journey from Earth to Jupiter, with no CG effects at all, I'm left with more admiration for 2001, and a disappointment in Hollywood for making accuracy such an unexpected thing that people comment on it. But at least we have this.
There are some obvious problems, most notably the locations of various space stations relative to each other and to other satellites. I figured that was BS during the film, and confirmed it by reading a Tyson tweet. Yet, I don't know how else you could have a story like this. We should note that there is no space shuttle program any more, nor is there "Explorer", so maybe this film happens in a universe where things are a bit different.
The first half of the film is about Batman trying to save Robin... I mean Ryan, after their shuttle is catastrophically hit by debris. I found the first half to be fairly average, and I blame Clooney. I just can't take him seriously any more. They should have gone with a non-Hollywood actor.
The second half is about Ryan escaping ever-more-desperate situations on her trip back to Earth. The film gets significantly better in this half, so it's worth it. For atmosphere, I draw your attention to Le salaire de la peur (1953) (The Wages of Fear). These movies both patiently build a tension that have you gripping the arms of your seat.
In terms of effects, I'm going to assume that almost everything that wasn't fixed in place in front of an actor was CG. That's a lot of work, and it was mostly good. But I was disappointed with the fire. The fire was good for 1999. For 2013, it was pathetic. Unless fire in space looks like poorly-animated CG fire, in which case it was spot-on. At least there wasn't a lot of it.
The ending was somewhat of a let-down (see what I did there?). Here we have a person who has just been through an experience that no gods cared to help her survive, and that will render Earth orbit unusable for humanity, and she both thanks gods, and tells Matt to say hi to her dead daughter. How cheap. How predictable. If this film wanted to make a statement about religion, her capsule should have crash-landed in an Islamic republic, where should would have been sentenced to whipping for being discovered improperly covered at the beach. All the knowledge, all the heroism, all the humanity embodied by this character would be instantly irrelevant, reduced to an object at the whim of religious nuts. Now THAT would be a statement worth making, if anyone would dare.
I really disliked the music. How many times do we have to suffer the cliché of crescendo orchestra followed by silence? I think I noticed three, and three more during the credits, because they are such suspense!
Was the frog at the end an homage to launch-frog? I'm going to take it that way.
In any case, this is certainly one of the better films of 2013, and is probably in the top three 3D films of 2013. I just wanted it to live up to the hype, and it does not.