Fantastic visuals, stilted writing

Rating: 7/10 (7 November 2013)

"Gravity" is worth your money just for the opening scene. In a world where movies are plagued by directors/producers who think any shot longer than .5 seconds is dreadfully boring (yes you, Michael Bay), keeping the camera perfectly steady for at least two minutes is an amazingly daring approach that turned out to be a brilliant fetch. It immediately captures your attention by doing everything Hollywood hates (that's ironic, but not very), it's a magnificent opening. There are more breath-taking scenes spread throughout the movie, visually it's an amazing experience and it actually shows us that movies like these can be made for other reasons than just to show of new technologies. The technical side is amazing, but it's also functional, and that's something a lot of movies seem to forget. In the second half however, this movie's flaws really come into play. The screenplay is just really mediocre, when you take away how fantastic the movie looks it's really just a basic tearjerker with an absolutely terrible ending. The character development doesn't flow at all, it's just thrown into there as forcibly as possible as they kinda hope nobody notices. What's the significance of Bullock's character losing her child anyway? Isn't being lost in space with no oxygen enough drama to keep the plot going? I stared in awe at the first half, but the second half just doesn't add up. Movie of the year? Visually yes, but I don't know if that's enough.