A Wild Ride Well Worth the Price

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2013)

Let me preface this review with saying that I loved Gravity. I haven't had this much awe and tension in a movie in a very long time and this is almost entirely due to the the wonderful cinematography and masterful use of CGI by director Alfonso Cuaron and Emmanuel Lubezki. Never has a film put me in the mindset of what the emptiness of space really feels like. To be a tiny dot in the unforgiving mosaic of stars and the violent silence of infinite nothingness. To fall victim to the laws of physics we all take for granted on our calm blue sphere, to be thrown to the lions of loneliness.
The aspect of Gravity that, to me, is glaringly left out of the reviews I have read is the dialogue. Its stale, cliché and conjured surprising feelings of discomfort while sitting in awe of every other aspect of the film. For any musicians, especially guitarists, it felt like watching a virtuosic guitarist playing the songs of Green Day with the New York Symphony. They script simply did not meet the HUGELY impressive space that Alfonso has created. By no means are George Clooney and Sandra Bullock a Daniel Day-Lewis but are nowhere near D- List actors. Not by name but by their own personal filmographies and notable performances prove them capable of carrying the weight of an emotional performance. While dialogue is scattered throughout the movie in-between amazing set pieces of destruction and computer generated beauty, the jarring blandness of the dialogue feels like speed bumps on the autobahn, ruining the high speed fun and terror of the main character of the film. Space.
The realism created by the visual effects team is so encompassing, you immediately lose yourself in the scale and emptiness of what's truly outside of Earth. The action in so perfectly placed you never once feel a lull in the film. From the initial destruction that sends Bullock hurdling through space, to the high speed fire chasing her through the International Space Station, to the edge of your seat second impact of debris from a destroyed Russian satellite you constantly feel like you as an audience member could be swept into black nothingness at any moment.
I highly recommend this movie (especially in IMAX 3D/3D) to anyone. It is fun, exciting, beautiful and terrifying throughout the hour and forty five minutes without letting up until the end credits roll. Come into it with the understanding that you will need to let the dialogue wash over you like the tiny waves in between the large breakers that make the ocean so terrifyingly fun. Just as Avatar did four years ago, Gravity sets the bar so high for what a CGI focused film can do to create a space that is simply not possibly with conventional movie making techniques. Go see this in theaters and do not wait for the DVD release, it is truly awe inspiring like nothing we have seen in quite some time.