a one-of-a-kind visual experience

Rating: 9/10 (19 November 2013)

"Gravity" is that rare movie that, while a tour-de-force on a technical level, also happens to come with a great deal of its own - pardon the pun - gravitas.
Sandra Bullock, in a bravura, near-one-woman performance, plays Dr. Ryan Stone, an astronaut on her first mission into outer space, sent there on Space Shuttle Explorer to perform some much-needed repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope. While she's space walking with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), the shuttle is hit by debris from a missile strike the Russians have launched to take out a non-operational satellite. Things go from bad to worse when the two astronauts are torn away from the now-destroyed shuttle and are cast out into deep space with little hope for a safe return to earth.
Director Alfonso Cuaron has gathered together a team of technological wizards to replicate, as closely as is humanly possible, the experience of floating adrift in outer space: the weightlessness, the uncontrollable spinning (warning: take your Dramamine beforehand), the immense size and grandeur of Earth as seen from hundreds of miles above the surface. The purely visceral nature of the movie goes a long way towards mitigating any qualms one might have as to the plausibility of every single thing it is showing us.
The screenplay by Cuaron and his son Jonas does well within the admittedly restrictive parameters demanded by the narrative, which is why the performances of Bullock and Clooney ultimately play so crucial a role in the success of the movie. They make us care about the people to whom this is happening - and, without that, all the special effects in the world couldn't make this concept work. Even from inside a space helmet, Bullock runs the gamut of emotions from queasiness to fear to anger to despair to resignation to hope to determination. It's all there, packed within a taut hour-and-a-half-long running time.
In a way, a film like "Gravity" makes movie-reviewing almost superfluous, since it's virtually impossible to convey in words the true nature of the experience. Go watch it for yourself.