Yeah I know this movie has been out for almost two months and it's kind of old news, but I never got a chance to see it when it came out. But it's thanksgiving, my family and I wanted to do something, so since only my parents have seen it, we went to watch it, and here's how that went.
Plot: This is another one of those times where I keep my plot paragraph completely short because with this kind of film I really have to. But basically, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (yeah I know their characters have names but let's face it, most of us are only going to know them as just Bullock and Clooney) are these astronauts in space on their shuttle, the Explorer. But when a chain reaction from a missile strike causes a cloud of debris to hit their shuttle, Bullock and Clooney are left trying to find a way to find a station and find a way down to Earth before they are killed.
I'm going to start of pointing out that in terms of story and characters, this is an extremely simple film. In fact, before I saw this movie, my Editing Aesthetics teacher talked about how he really hated that there was hardly any really deep development in Bullock or Clooney's characters in the sense that they're giving us reason to relate to them or try to make them really stand out or likable as characters. And he does make a very strong point, because the main reason I'm calling these people by the names of the actors and not the characters is because they hardly give us any reason to think of them as characters. For the most part - with Clooney especially - they kind of appear like they're just the actors and not really anybody else. But as much of a negative thing as that can be for some people like my teacher, the fact remains that they're not necessarily suppose to be. Because as Doug Walker put it in his own review, it's more of an experience then anything else. But boy does it do a great job at bringing that experience to life. They do a terrific job at making it feel like it really is in space with how they're floating and there's no sound out there and how everything that is especially happening to Sandra Bullock makes space totally scary. The first 20 minutes or so really set the mood for this film especially on how so much of it was done all in one shot. In fact, this film was kind of made so that cuts would only occur more and more the closer you get to the climax. The effects were great, the way they used a lot of the music and their occasional sound effects were really well played, it had great cinematography, and it was interesting it the symbolism they were using throughout the whole movie. Bullock gave us a terrific performance on what her "character" was experiencing. And while Clooney wasn't bad per say, he was really just...well...George Clooney and nothing else. Now if I can think of any real close to problems with this movie, I would say that during the second half it did kind of act more like a movie then an experience in the sense that Bullock has this monologue during the very end and things like that. And...I feel they overdid it a little with the building suspense music. I mean I know they need to use it - heck, my brother Tommy said "How else where they going to make it suspenseful" and I agree. But I'm just saying they could've tried to have given a little more variety of the same music. But regardless, both issues are very small nitpicks and neither of them are done in a way that really makes a dent in this movie. Plus, when the music isn't building up suspense, it's great.
And that's my review for Gravity. If you don't like films where there's little character development and not a whole lot of story, you'll probably not like this film. But it's otherwise a great film with excellent effects, terrific acting, and great cinematography that altogether makes Gravity a great film to experience the horrors of space. I don't see it winning Best Picture despite its HUGE publicity, but it's definitely going to win a few Oscars when it comes to the technical stuff. If you haven't seen it in theaters yet, it's worth trying to see it now.
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