Gravity

Plot synopsis:
In 2014/2015, bio-medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a Mission Specialist on her first space shuttle mission, STS-157. She is on a spacewalk repairing a panel on the Hubble Space Telescope, accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), who is commanding his final expedition. Mission Control (voice of Ed Harris) suddenly instructs them to abort their spacewalk and return to the STS. Houston tells them that debris from a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite has caused a chain reaction, destroying other satellites, and a huge debris field is heading right at them. Within a couple of minutes, they lose contact with Mission Control, though Stone and Kowalski continue to transmit "in the blind", hoping that the ground crew can hear them.High-speed debris strike the STS, sending it spinning wildly, with Stone at the end of the boom arm. A piece of debris breaks the robot arm off from the STS, and Stone is forced to release the tether holding her to the robot arm. Once free, she is thrown far from the STS. Stone panics, trying to contact Houston or Kowalski. Kowalski, who is wearing a thruster pack, suddenly appears and attaches her tether to him. He flies them back to the STS; on the way they find the engineer Shariff (Phaldut Sharma), his helmet smashed and his skull mostly open and empty. They find that the STS Explorer has been catastrophically damaged. The shuttle's interior has been ripped open by debris and the remainder of crew are dead. Kowalski decides to use the thruster pack to get to the International Space Station (ISS), which is in orbit about 100 km (60 mi) away. Kowalski estimates they have 90 minutes before the debris field completes an orbit and threatens them again.With Stone's oxygen reserve running low, they float through space to the ISS. Kowalski asks Stone about her life back home and learns that her daughter died in a schoolyard accident. As they approach the slightly damaged ISS, they see that its crew has already evacuated in one of the Soyuz modules and that the parachute of the other Soyuz, designated TMA-14M, has accidentally deployed, making it useless for return to Earth. Kowalski says that the Soyuz can still be used to travel to Tiangong, the nearby Chinese space station, to retrieve another module that can take them to Earth. All but out of air and maneuvering fuel for the thruster pack, the two try to grab onto the ISS as they zoom by. The tether holding them together breaks and at the last moment, Stone's leg becomes entangled in the Soyuz's parachute lines. Stone grabs Kowalski's tether, just barely stopping him from flying off into space. Kowalski realizes that his momentum will carry them both away, and over Stone's protests, he decouples his end of the tether so that Stone can survive. The tension in the lines pulls her back towards the ISS. As Kowalski floats away, he radios her with additional instructions about how to get to the Chinese space station, encouraging her to continue her survival mission.Stone enters the ISS through an airlock and gets out of the spacesuit. She begins to get familiarized with the ISS when an alarm suddenly alerts her to a fire. She makes her way to the module where the fire is and attempts to put it out, but she is momentarily stunned when the force of the extinguisher thrusts her backward into the bulkhead. She recovers and knocks the flames down again and pushes through them towards the Soyuz. With the fire closing in, she closes the hatch, pulling in the fire extinguisher at the last moment when it blocks the hatch. She separates from the ISS only to find that the Soyuz's parachute lines are entangled in the station's rigging. She dons a Soviet spacesuit and exits the spacecraft to release the cables when the debris field completes its orbit. Clinging to the Soyuz, the ISS is destroyed around her. Free of the ISS and the parachute lines, Stone reenters the spacecraft and aligns it with Tiangong. She fires the thrusters but the fuel gauge is wrong: the tanks are empty. Stone realizes she is stranded and believes she'll die. After listening to an Inuit fisherman named Aningaaq (voice of Orto Ignatiussen) on the ground speak to her, she slows the oxygen flow which will cause her to fall into unconsciousness from lack of oxygen before she dies. As she begins to lose consciousness, Kowalski suddenly appears outside, opens the spacecraft lock, and enters the cabin. He cheerfully asks her if she wants to live or die. He tells her to use the Soyuz's landing rockets to reach Tiangong. As she returns to full consciousness, Kowalski is gone, part of a hallucinatory dream. Stone restores the flow of oxygen and uses the landing thrusters to navigate towards Tiangong.With no fuel to slow or to dock the Soyuz with the Chinese station, Stone ejects herself from the Soyuz via explosive decompression. She uses the remaining pressure in the fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster to push herself towards Tiangong, which has also been abandoned. She enters the Tiangong space station and makes her way through its interior to the Shenzhou capsule. The Tiangong station's orbit has deteriorated due to hits by the debris field and it begins to break up on the upper edge of the atmosphere. Stone is unable to separate the capsule from the space station, and she resigns herself to her fate, whatever it may be.As the space stations begins to break up, the Shenzhou capsule is broken off from the station, and Stone fires the device that separates the capsule from the rest of the spacecraft. As the capsule falls towards earth, it rights itself and descends through the atmosphere. The radio crackles with traffic from Mission Control, who are tracking the capsule, and tell her that rescue is on its way. The chute automatically deploys and Stone lands in a lake near the shore. The cabin is full of smoke, and after she blows the hatch the capsule tilts, allowing water to enter. Just when she thought she was safe, she's unable to exit the capsule. The capsule sinks to the bottom with Stone inside. Stone finds a bubble of air inside the capsule and exits the capsule, shedding her spacesuit so she can get to the surface. She swims to shore and with difficulty, gets up and takes a few shaky steps.

Tags: suspenseful, realism, atmospheric, flashback

Review:
Whilst 'Gravity' falls short against films like '2001: A Space Odyssey', it is a tense and visually stunning thriller from Alfonso Cuarón.
The critics stated that you would be gripping to the edge of your seats, this is true in every aspect, the film is full of intense and thriller situations with amazing performances from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.
I identified with Sandra Bullocks character on a couple levels and I felt like I was in her place at the final scene.Gravity.
Add to that a story that never relents with suspense and emotional intensity and you have a remarkable movie.The idea of being under constant stress, worrying for your main characters, should not be new if you know the director Alfonso Cuaron's previous major film, "Children without Men." And like that film, he works with his same cameraman, Emmanuel Lubezki, who has become a co-conspirator in his films.
The characters also provide some good laughs.It was one of the better 'space' movies.
space is much more awesome and frightening if you portray it more realistically.Hopefully the movie also provides a good reminder about how special this little rock is, and how unforgivable the rest of the universe is.
In just a few hundred words, I will now try to do the film, its director and cast (Sandra Bullock & George Clooney), justice.
GRAVITY, most certainly, brings to mind the adage, "The exception proves the rule!" As this review is being written, Gravity is rated 8.5 on IMDb.com, by 184,000, placing it in the all-time film top 75, just behind The LION KING and just ahead of REQUIEM FOR a DREAM.
George Clooney's character, larger-than-life, veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, is the jovial kind of guy who can be a bit of an ***hole at times, but amazes you with his simple selfless professionalism when it really counts.
At the same time - and that's the brilliance of the movie - Gravity is a celebration of the human being, because even though we are in fact very insignificant, it is our will to life, and our effort to make our lives meaningful, that make us matter.
That same tagline could easily be effectively utilized for Alfonso Cuarón's latest thriller, Gravity.Starring two unknowns by the names of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, Gravity puts the two A-listers together as a medical engineer and an astronaut that must work in tandem to survive once a freak accident leaves them adrift in space.Their struggle takes place after debris from a Russian satellite comes speeding through their orbit ripping their space shuttle to shreds causing Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) to float untethered in space.
Two other astronauts and a radio voice from Houston, Texas are the only other character influences and their parts wouldn't amount to 2 minutes if strung in order.With only two actors to carry the entire 90-minute runtime, the movie relies heavily on its visuals of space and the various orbiting stations with the earth always prominent in the background.
Gravity will contend for Oscar's in Visual Effects, Sound and Editing.Cuarón incredibly is able to give his audience a sense of claustrophobia whether his cast are inside an orbiting capsule or in the vast darkness of space.
Just when I thought "Lost in Translation" would win the golden cupie doll for the most overrated movie of all time, along comes "Gravity" to steal it out from under Bill Murray's nose hairs.Winning this award is a lot like winning the Double Golden Turkey Award (points if you know which movie won THAT one) - except at least Ed Wood TRIED to make a movie.
If you want symbolism, please watch "The Matrix" movies or "Lost." THOSE productions are chock full of symbolism.The symbolism of "Gravity" is a superficial attempt to inject depth and meaning that the script just doesn't have.
Except the 10 first minutes that eventually let some hope stay on the screen, and some nice 3D images, this movie has been a waste of time.
Seriously, I couldn't tell you what the point of this stupid film was.What most angers me is that it has this collective 8.6 rating on IMDb.com and we would NEVER have wasted time and money if it weren't for this site, which we trusted prior to this.
The stunning visuals combined with great 3D work and sound effects totally draw you into orbit right along Sandra for the 90 minutes it lasts.
There is almost nothing about this movie that is any way related to how things like this would happen in space.
I saw it in 3D which added nothing to the movie experience and to be honest was a complete waste of time and money and there were few scenes (if any) that merited 3D at all.However my greatest contempt is for this website itself (IMDb) who have either actively been involved or deliberately allowed a false rating to be contrived and displayed on this website to dupe people into seeing it.Either the film studio has paid people to write and give falsely great reviews (films above 8.0 are rare) or IMDb have taken money to deceive people like myself into seeing this film with its artificially created high rating.Whether I like a film or not it is irrelevant because I can always find reasons why others would disagree with me but this film had nothing at all to offer.To summarize it was a very weak story line with rather unbelievable lines as to how anyone could have survived and little or no special effects making me for only the third time in my life want to ask for my money back but this film definitely was my highest rated rip off film of all time as I was conned by this site into seeing it because of its false 8.7 rating.I feel so strongly that I may even sue the film studio for misrepresentation as I was definitely not entertained in any shape or form by this film an very much doubt I shall be using this site in future unless they do something about this rating fixing..
Obviously, you have to show the only reference point available over and over again: the Earth from 400 km above, and what you see is more or less the same, for 90 min..And, honestly, Sandra Bullock in a space suit doesn't give me the slightest impression of what it would mean, to be in such a situation as an astronaut.
my 4 stars are 2 for acting, 2 for special effects.Dialog get's more or less 0, because it sounds like it was hashed out in about 10 minutes.I'd normally save the rest for plot, but there was none...
Bear in mind I'm a huge fan of movies like inception and the matrix, movies which some would accuse of being more special effects than plot - but this takes the biscuit.I'll say no more, because the trailer plus the inevitable ending speaks for itself..
She didn't seem to be the right fit for the role but I don't think she can blamed for bad writing and misdirection ( no one told the director that thirty minutes of hyperventilating might be unnecessary realism?) By all means go see this film for the spectacular visuals but don't expect a story to go along with the spectacle.
As many other reviewers here, I have no clue as to which movie the "prof reviewers" have seen.Apparently it's not the same movie that i saw.What i saw, was stunning visuals, bad story telling, bad story writing, one dimensional characters, and a ton of supposed realism gone out the window.I felt like the movie tried to sell me on something that could be real...
Want to watch a decent film in space rent Apollo 13 or absolutely anything as I have just wasted 2 hours of my life which I want back..
A friend described Sandra Bullock's moaning and gasping in a good portion of the film as sounding like "bad sex." This was just a bad movie with no realism and, really, no suspense...the whole thing just wasn't believable.
How Sandra Bullock's character was not screened out of the space program due to her emotional problems caused by the sudden death of her four year old child cannot be explained.
The visuals are great, but the rest is mediocre.Sandra Bullock's character is very annoying and incompetent for most of the film.
In space it seems, no one can see you create drivel.The sad thing is that with the utterly inexplicable high reviews and rave ratings this movie has received, Hollywood will only continue to pump out more dross like this and in so doing will only continue to contribute to the dumbing down of science among the general public overall.Basically if you like bad comic books, never progressed beyond junior level science (and did pretty badly in this), like huge pointless CGI explosions, enjoy 2D, juvenile, uninspirational characters, backed up by clueless, uninspirational acting and juvenile one dimensional dialogue (even though they use 3D special effects to no meaningful purpose, beyond a pointless visual spectacle for the spectacularly uniformed ), then this is exactly the movie for you!
For example, I like Inception but there is a big difference between filming "no gravity" effects with a normal camera and doing it with a 3D IMAX camera and the Academy Award Oscar is the evidence.
The movie takes place in space, but there's definitely no alien twists to consider, because gravity and physics themselves are already their enemy, and all you have to do is to take its ride like you've never seen space before.
The genius of the film is just being simple, but what's extraordinary is how it elevates the use of CGI and a direction giving us a good amount of suspense we need for a space thriller.
One thing people should know about Gravity is it's a very simple film with a very simple story and concept, but by Alfonso Cuarón's strong ambition, all of its elements are perfectly fit together.
Yes there are flaws, like many films, but these flaws are overridden by sheer magnificence and beauty that Gravity manages to create in its depiction of space and the events that occur during a catastrophic mission.To put things short and sweet, the visuals are breathtaking, the tone is perfect and the pacing is flawless.
Cuarón captured the mood perfectly and had me in the eyes of Bullock to feel the situation she was in and be involved with the character's emotions from the beginning to the end.The technical production of the film uses techniques which are new to the genre and make the experience seem like nothing you've felt before.
There is a definite sense of scale which the cinematography brings through the extreme wide shots and the minute long shots that suggests a lack of impact in space.Lastly, as mentioned, the visual effects are just mind-blowing.
The visuals and the effects show space from an angle that has no restrictions and because of this, creates a unique experience that has not been created before.Overall, the film has a perfect rating from me because I can not give it an valuable or deserving faults as I was lost in an unforgettable experience that I reckon will make a big impact in the history of cinema and will last for many years to come..
I'm not sure how to make this review into the minimum 10 lines because, let's face it, the movie doesn't contain 10 lines worth of content, but I feel like people need to see a review from someone that doesn't just do as they're told and follow what the critics say.
The main characters are played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney who both do an excellent job but this flick isn't outstanding because of the great acting or the story, it's the superior technical level this movie is on.
Whether you talk about sound, which of course isn't always around as you are in space, so the most of the time you just listen to the powerful soundtrack, the impressive visuals when thousands of pieces of metal fly by you, or just the camera movement by Emmanuel Lubezki who won several Oscars for a good reason.
What follows is endless (and mindless) scenes of Sandra Bullock tumbling through space after the shuttle she and George Clooney are on is destroyed, right up to the predictable conclusion.
Total rubbish.Sci-fi is a genre open to and full of spurious movies, but adding George Clooney and Sandra Bullock is like trying to polish a turd.
And even though i like Sandra Bullock and i believe her acting here is amazing, for what she was given to work with, having to sit for 1 and 1/2 hrs just to watch her float in space is too much.The only interesting thing was the story about the girl with the hairy guy.
Total Score: 7.5/10Gut Feeling: 8/10 - While I wondered how her character qualified for a space mission in the first place, Bullock delivers a moving performance in an immersive film that is worth seeing for the cinematography alone.Final Average Score: 7.75.
This is a beautiful film, when seeing these images from space towards earth it just looks so peaceful and beautiful, like nothing can ever go wrong or disrupt the big peaceful silence, but something can and does.After about 10 minutes you are hooked, sitting on the edge of your seat, wishing, hoping and sayings thank god that is not me out there.
This is a great sci-fi thriller, it is very realistic and very powerful in this deliverance of the story and sub stories, I don't know it this is unrealistic or not, but it really was entertaining and fantastic.I think it was very hyped, but after talking about it with others who have seen it, I like it more and more, in the beginning I might have set my hopes to high, but digging into the film more gives it more meaning and the fact that this is so technically good and very well acted is amazing..
You will live with here all the movie, it has an amazing soundtrack and the visual effects are amazing, you will feel like you're in space and everything that happens, it's happening to you, you live as the character and you feel as you were lost like her.
The studio must have paid shills to write glowing reviews so we can waste our hard earned money on this junk.Given that I was there in the 60's when the real Apollo missions were unfolding and worked for the company (Grumman Aircraft) that built the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) that actually landed on the moon, I am a little more than familiar with space technology and what can and cannot happen.The first real space movie was Kubrik's "2001:A Space Odyssey" which to this day hold a high place in my heart which Gravity failed in every way to capture my appreciation for what I hoped for, and really wanted it to be, a great movie.I paid extra to see the IMAX 3D version and was not disappointed with the CGI special effects and the implementation of 3D.
This movie stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney who are astronauts.
It really feels like you, the viewer, are in space with them and that adds to the movie a lot.
That is the case here as space just feels real and the huge amount of work to make it happen isn't made a fuss of and doesn't get in the way of enjoying the film.
Gravity toys with your emotions from minute one, juxtaposing the beauty and serenity of space with its impending danger and destruction.The film stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and tells the story of two astronauts and their fight to get back to Earth after the destruction of their space shuttle.
Look out for the scene partway through the film with Bullock floating in a C-shape fetal position, and remember the way astronauts have to relearn to walk and gain strength in their muscles upon returning to Earth, like a child.
Movie was awful, George Clooney was decent, but Sandra Bullock just ruined it.
Visually, Gravity is unlike what we have seen on a cinema screen before and arguably it has one of the best uses of 3D in a movie.
And how great a movie can it really be where there is only one character (and almost no dialog) on camera for most of the film.
No way could Ryan Stone figure out how to operate the Chinese capsule just by poking around.Of lesser failures: Space debris traveling 20,000 miles an hour relative to an observer is not going to be visible except *possibly* as an indistinct cloud that passes by so fast the "observer" won't know what hit them.For all of the CGI effort, I had hoped the Earth would look more realistic and (naturally) beautiful.In closing, the special effects were great but the weak story relied on too many absurd contrivances and the script contained no redeeming dialog (sorry, George).
A handsome show off, with a serious penchant for rescuing damsels in distress, sits naturally with our George, whatever the state of his pulse.But the movie is really about Bullock's character, and she is an actor capable of both great comedy and feeling (often within the same work) but here she is just not believable with the exception of the initial panic scenes that do get everyone's heart racing for a short time.
Next time hire a first year physics student from any university to explain how things in space work.Stop reading if you don't want to know about the easily predictable and totally not a surprise "spoilers".But lets ignore all the "it could never happen that way" stuff and just look at the movie.
George Clooney and Sandra Bullock floating around in space for two hours eventually became my best guess.