Sunday, October 6, 2013

Alfonso Cuaron's " Gravity" Review




I just watched today Alfonso Cuaron's highly awaited movie "Gravity" and, boy, it's a 
more than a movie, it's an experience... you probably never seen a movie like that!
Although all of the action happen in space above Earth don't expect anything like Stanley Kubrick's "2001, A Space Odyssey" which still remain unbeatable because of its metaphysics dimension. But Gravity is still fascinating and a fantastic movie, really!

Georges Clooney and Sandra Bullock are playing in "Gravity" the two main characters  in what is a heart-pounding thriller that pulls you into the infinite and unforgiving realm of deep space. Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (Clooney). But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes because the Russian have blown up one of their satellite and a chain react happen. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone in Space... 

Gravity is definitely a "Houston, we have a problem" movie and i strongly recommend  if you can to watch it just like i did on an IMAX screen as it looks gorgeous with the IMAX definition, and even in 3D. That said, as good as Gravity is, my only problem was a personal one and it is Sandra Bullock. Don't get me wrong, she's perfectly fine in Gravity but just put her and me in the same room during 48 hours, and i know it'll be a carnage! It took me some time to understood why and now i know it's related to her personal type of "energy" - inside energy i mean. Not to mention that i always found her not that good in emotional scenes. But, again, this is just personal and there is a lot of people who like her, as you probably do, so don't pay attention to this.



Gravity's filming and photography is absolutely stunning and it's hard to escape to the "how did they did it?" question even if we know that actors were in front of plenty of green screens all along the shooting. But the result is something of an infinite beauty and probably the only film since Kubrick's 2001 that gives you the feeling of what is deep space above Earth. Surprisingly, considering all what happen in Gravity, the story and action is pretty believable. Sure, in real life you'll need a lot of both bad luck and good luck to go through all this, but the story works well and i won't be 
surprised if Gravity  was one of this fall biggest success.

But there is one person who will both love and hate the movie, and it's James Cameron. Cameron, just like anyone will be stunned by Gravity and Alfonso Cuaron's brilliant directing but i'm damn' sure that he will be "green with envy" as it is exactly the kind of "space" movie that Cameron would have love to direct! And because - just like Stanley Kubrick and David Lean - Alfonso Cuaron practice - consciously or unconsciously - "the policy of the scortched earth" - meaning that when he does a movie about a particular subject nobody can come after him and do a better one on the same subject - then James Cameron himself can forget about doing a movie where action would take place right above Earth ( but Cameron has plenty of others things to care about with his Avatar sequels  so it's no big problem for him ).

Editing: A good friend of mine just told me that Cameron declared recently "It's the movie about Space that i always wanted to see!"

At the time i'm writing this review it's still Sunday in the U.S, and if you don't know what to do this Sunday, just go out to watch Gravity. If you start to have enough of these superheroes movies and are in lack of real good movies then you should like Gravity. And by the way, just to create a link with Disney - although i should say Pixar - there is even a scene in Gravity which will remind you a famous scene from Wall-E - but i don't tell you which one! Go ahead, go out of your home and watch Gravity today, it takes place in real time, last 87 minutes in "space" with you on the edge of your seat! 

Here is Gravity's extended trailer.

 


Picture and video: copyright Warner Bros

1 comment:

Dan O. said...

Good review. Not the best script in the world, but the visuals and everything else about it were. I guess I meant for that to be a pun.