Np space movie will ever be the same!

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2013)

What is cinema? Its the perfect blend of sights and sounds that should stir your audio visual sensory and in the process entertain you. Even if its got a paperthin plot, amazing performances and the right setting and score can create wonders for the audience. Its also a medium with which we should be able to live out our fantasies. Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity fulfills everything a movie should do. Forget deep space battles and X- Wings or the Enterprise swishing past by (if possible), forget Xenomorphs and LV 223. This is real life and it is at its best here.
Gravity opens with a shot of earth from space, it panned for some seconds and I was left skeptic, questioning if the whole movie would be so. Images struck me from 2001 A Space Odyssey and while 2001 was never EVER a bad movie, I didn't pay to watch it once again. My misconceptions were raked, minutes into the movie when George Clooney and Sandra Bullock's characters came into view, chattering, fixing stuff on a space satellite. A few more minutes in, they were left stranded in space with nothing but their wits and spacesuits with depleting oxygen. Our protagonists from there on takes us on a bonafide roller-coaster ride through space ensuing chaos & thrills enough to make you feel the usually-harmless-intermission-to-empty-your-bladders, intrusive!
Alfonso Cuaron has created a flawless masterpiece here. Gravity will dumbfound you to levels beyond that you will even forget that you are watching a movie. There were times where I forgot to breath like many in the audience. You feel you are inside the protagonists spacesuit and believe me the beautiful world will immerse you, not having to think twice that you are watching a movie. On a surface its a survivalist movie, but under the surface it has complex levels of philosophical goodness. There was this particular scene where Ryan Stone takes on a foetal position as soon as she gets inside a space stationsimply awesome. Alfonso Cuaron, as evident from Children of Men, is a director with a panache for rich visuals and simultaneously telling a gripping story and the same can be seen here in Gravity. The plot isn't much to brag about but it wonderfully adheres to the visuals, promising a journey you are not likely to forget anytime soon.
Had the actors weren't of caliber, it could have gone utterly wrong, considering you have barely 3 actors the whole of Gravity. But when you've got Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in the lead, you can set aside whatever ill notions you've got. It could be considered a female- centric movie and Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone leaves no space for disappointment. I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up with an Academy Award (let alone for the movie or the visual effects). George Clooney, as usual, brings the charisma and charm, the wisdom as well as dalliance to Gravity.
The visual effects are stunning and beyond words. For someone who's never been to space, Gravity was as authentic an experience that I could have had and I am exceedingly pleased with it. This is the kinda movie, theatres are made for. I watched it at the IMAX and I was sucked into the 'out of the world' experience. The visuals rich, advanced and said to be engineered just for the movie, it was an orgasmic sight to behold. For a movie which is stripped much off its sounds, the score comes into play less often as expected but when it does, it does make for a terrifically tense experience. Two thumbs up for Steven Price's captivating score.
I can't recommend Gravity enough. Watching this on a small screen will never do justice to the efforts the cast and crew has put in the movie but more than that its a definitive experience of space travel. Why would you want to shell out millions (like thats possible) when the same could be experienced with a few bucks? That could be a implausible question but its as close we can get to space travel (And frankly this movie has made me astrophobic). One of the best movies of the year and worth every penny spent on the IMAX experience.