In a Word: Beautiful.

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2014)

I have two major cinematic regrets from 2013. The first is that I believed that A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD couldn't possibly be as bad as the reviews were claiming. I was wrong to trust that the series might regain it's footing. Thanks, Bruce Willis. Now I have trust issues. My second regret is that I foolishly failed to catch GRAVITY in theaters. This movie is probably one of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen. The plot is fairly simple but the massively impressive production value more than compensates. Director Alfonso Cuarón has crafted a thrilling survival film set in the harshest environment humans (well, a select few anyway) have endured: space. It follows the tribulations of Dr. Ryan Stone. Stone is a mission specialist with NASA that has been sent into orbit to perform upgrades to the Hubble telescope in her first assignment. Disaster strikes on her first spacewalk when the Russians destroy one of their satellites and the debris cloud rockets around in orbit, detonating other satellites and creating a lethal wave of shredded metal careening around the Earth at 20,000 MPH. The space shuttle is destroyed and most of the crew is killed, leaving Stone and mission commander Matt Kowalski as the sole survivors left drifting above the Earth and counting the minutes until the debris' next deadly pass. Stone will need to face her fears if she hopes to survive as she and Kowalski must find a means of returning to Earth alive.
I'm a space geek and have been for as long as I can remember. As much as I love science fiction, and I do quite a bit, there have been few films that have ever given much effort to portray space as it actually is. There's always some sort of convenient technology to prevent the filmmakers from having to deal with the harsh realities of space travel. GRAVITY isn't science fiction but is instead a survival drama set in the environment of space, and Cuarón uses the full gamut of hazards that come with leaving the Earth's atmosphere. There are no rocket boots to make maneuvering in space a simple task here. Well, there's a sort of jet pack unit used in limited capacity but the danger still remains that if Stone or Kowalski make one wrong move, they will find themselves slowly drifting off for a lonely, horrifying death as they wait for their air supply to run out. GRAVITY isn't 100% accurate to the trials and tribulations of surviving in space and some liberties were taken for the sake of telling a story, but it's so much more realistic than has been portrayed in pretty much any movie that's come before. Cuarón and his team have found a way of realistically portraying total weightlessness so well that I couldn't wait to watch the behind-the-scenes footage to find out how it was done. I loved that there were no sleek, fancy spaceships and we get legitimate recreations of existing space structures such as the International Space Station.
And the visuals are just incredible. This is a movie that, for the utmost effect, should be viewed in IMAX 3D. I missed out and watched the movie in high definition when it was released on home video, but I saw enough (and was wowed enough) to know that I had missed out on something incredible. The Earth, as seen from orbit, is an amazing backdrop for a film and there was not a single moment of this film that I didn't find absolutely gorgeous. I realize I've spent most of this comment ranting about my love for the film's visuals but that's because it's the best reason to see this film. The story is very simple: Stone, eventually left to her own devices, must confront her fear of death and find a means of escaping her fate. It's primarily just Stone (Sandra Bullock) traversing from one hope to another as she goes from station to station searching for a functional escape capsule while dodging the debris/blender. I hate to undermine it because it's still an exciting story and it keeps you on the edge of your seat from the very beginning. Stone is a sympathetic character and we learn bits about her as the story progresses and watch as she eventually buckles under the pressure of her situation. At this point, we know that Bullock is a talented actress and she does well in this movie where she's pretty much the entirety of the cast for most of the film. Cuarón and Bullock manipulate your emotions and keep you invested until the final frame, and it all combines with the director's amazing vision to create one of the coolest movies I've seen in a long time.