Beautiful, and fantastically directed, but a bad film

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2016)

As a quick cap on, this film is a survival film about an astronaut, played by Sandra Bullock, who is stuck in space after a catastrophe happens that ends her mission in space and strands her without any help on the way. That is the basis. It is directed by Alfonso Cauron, and his direction is much needed in this eye-candy film.
Alfonso Cuaron is a fantastic director. His work on the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men, the latter in particular, is nothing short of phenomenal. The long take, the attention to detail in the fore and back ground, all are a joy to see in films that have more to see each time you watch them. This is no different. There are moments where we move in and out of an astronaut's visor to get in and out of their traumatic experience, all within the fluidity of his signature long take, amongst gorgeous visuals.
Visually too this film scores very well. The images of Earth from space, the explosions, of which there are many I will unashamedly spoil, are similarly exhilarating to see. I had the downside of viewing the film on a 2D home TV. I got the impression that 3D would have been better for a viewing of the film, but it was still easy to appreciate the effort that went into the visual aspects of Gravity. The atmosphere from the visuals were very effective consequently and a joy to look at. Added to this atmosphere was a very effective and electronic score by Steven Price, that helped to enhance the film.
However, the film had glaring flaws that made apparent all the effort of the film's production went into the visuals. Foremost was the story. It was threadbare, and with 40 minutes to go, I stopped watching the film as I felt I had experienced all it had to offer. The films only substantial plot twist had occurred before this point, and so the films climactic ending was very predictable. Worse, the plot revolved entirely around something going wrong, and Sandra Bullock seeking a solution. This happens several times and by half way through, it felt repetitive and eye-rolling.
The characters were similarly dull. There are 5 characters in the film, of which 3 have a very small appearance, and so really there is only Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. This is all fine; there are many films that nail 2 people casts by granting them compelling and complex personalities that you care about. However, neither George nor Sandra had interesting characters. George played the intelligent heroic figure; Sandra the damsel in distress, who appeared to be woefully unprepared emotionally and technically for a specialist mission in space, and spent the majority of the film panicking.
The characters were frustratingly one dimensional, left very revealing by the lacking script. Clooney had practically no backstory, and had absolutely no depth to his character. Clooney and Bullock both did their best with the roles, but the difficulty of such simple characters made their job acting hard. This heavily detracted from the overall experience of the film, because the interest I got in the film from the visuals and directing style was heavily reduced by the plot, script and characters, to the extent that I didn't finish it.
Personally I am very surprised at the reception this film has got by critics and the voters on IMDb alike. I went into this film expecting a thriller that was also good. I finished the film without reaching its conclusion, with the impression that it was well produced, but not well made. Alfonso did very well, but he made a graphical presentation, not a film.
The 5 is for the superb visuals, atmosphere, score and direction. The pros to this film are in abundance, but the flaws in plot and character were too large to make the film ultimately enjoyable. The film may have looked good, but if I didn't feel the impetus to finish the film, it doesn't score above a 5 with me.