Audience in peril!

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2013)

After all the hype I was half expecting not to like this movie but it was impossible not to be blown away by it. The CGI is totally 'awesome': there was never a moment when I didn't feel I was up there orbiting the earth with Sandra Bullock and the wreckage of her spacecraft. GRAVITY is as ground-breaking (space-breaking?), if not quite as 'trippy', as Stanley Kubrick's 2001 was back in 1968.
There have been documentaries with more plot than this. Why would a mission to repair the Hubble Telescope need a Medical Officer? 100 years ago the Woman-in-Peril theme entailed tying her to a railway track. Here Bullock is adrift in space on her own for ten nerve-shredding minutes. Then the audience has to hold its breath for the rest of the movie wondering if she and and George Clooney can somehow beat the odds and make it back to Earth.
I did occasionally wonder why Gorgeous George was cast in the role when maybe some younger hunk might given the movie a bit more teen-appeal. The same could be said of Sandra Bullock, I guess, but she acts her socks off, presumably entirely working against a blue backdrop for the CGI guys to fill in. You are with this woman every inch of the way. Top marks to her and the director and cinematographer - and those CGI people. This is an Audience-in-Peril movie!