Not every blockbuster needs to be long

Rating: 9/10 (23 May 2014)

I didn't believe the hype. I had a slight interest in seeing this at the theater but never got around to it. I finally just got the DVD in Netflix and I figured this would be just like Avatar. A visually stunning piece of work that was otherwise just a bland movie when not seen in the theater in 3D. Boy was I wrong.
Gravity has no more than 2 actors in the entire movie. There are two other people that die 5 minutes in and the rest of the movie is Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. You'd think, how can these two floating around in space for the whole movie keep me entertained? Easy, through a series of tense situations and a perfect score. The film sets up right in the beginning that there is so sound in space. All you hear is them speaking and Sandra Bullock breathing heavily. There are scenes where satellites are being destroyed by debris and instead of loud explosions that you've grown accustomed to, there is a great score that tenses you up and allows a sense of dread to come over you.
In the era where every blockbuster thinks it has to be 2+ hours long, Gravity is a tight 90 minutes and it maximizes every single minute. I always hate in movies when a 30 second timer goes off when in reality it's two minutes. In Gravity, there are no flashbacks or cuts in time. The same amount of time has passed for us as it has for them. Gravity is nothing short of a triumph in modern day filmmaking.