Gravity - a movie review

About the movie Gravity, one reviewer put his title as "Don't bother reading this review. Just go see the movie."

I didn't read his review. We did go see the movie.

If you haven't seen Gravity, please do so. There are spoilers here.

I think this is a powerful film.

Let's get something clear right off the bat. I think Sandra Bullock is an amazing actress. If she's in the movie it's pretty certain I'll go see it at the theater.

Not so with George Clooney. I think he's a good actor, but I won't bother buying tickets for a film just because he's in it. Darling will.

So we both expected great things from Gravity, for different reasons.

I'm a fan of space. Lord knows I have plenty of it between my ears and a growing sense of it in my memories.

When we left the movie I told Darling "I think that might be the best movie I ever saw." Please take that as it sounds, in combination with that memory comment earlier.

I really liked this movie.

Now there have been a lot of comments about the flaws in the movie. I work in the Space Industry (is there an industry in Space? I don't know). I hear a lot of technical guys commenting on how almost none of what happened could happen.

Right. It's the movies. The question is hardly ever "could it happen?" The question is "do I want to watch it happen?" The answer, I think, is absolutely YES.

Sandra Bullock deserves something for being in this movie. A Silver Snoopy maybe. George Clooney was great, but that's probably because he had the perfect role as a snarky aging astronaut (sorry, George, but you were perfect). And Director Alfonso Cuarón needs some award, too, just for the sheer, raw beauty of the film.

I never thought I'd rave about the cinematography in a movie, but I have to say that most of this film had me breathless. The shots of the Earth were beautiful, though we should have seen more clouds according to one astronaut. Yeah, okay, but clouds wouldn't be so pretty.

Our Earth is beautiful, and photos from space still take my breath away.

Sandra Bullock, as Dr. Ryan Stone (yes, I even love the name - it means we might be related), suffers through a space odyssey and emerges alive and back on Earth (there's the spoiler - she didn't die).

I expected her to die, like in that shark movie I watched a few years ago where they showed the two people floating around and then the movie ended. She didn't die. She was able to pilot her way to safety, with the help of George Clooney as Matt Kowalksi, or his ghost or something.

One final word on this. Yes, I work with the parts on the Station and I get to look at a lot of pictures. Yes, I knew while I was watching the film that Dr. Ryan Stone was wearing the wrong kind of under-suit for the spacesuit. So what? It's a movie, and everyone would rather see Sandra Bullock in skimpy undergarments than in the white flannel underwear that real astronauts wear. (Okay it isn't white flannel underwear, but that gives you the general idea.)

Better than long underwear, isn't it?

I loved this movie. On a scale of one to ten, this gets at least an 8.5. I'm sure I love other movies more, but I can't seem to recall them at the moment. A must-see. Maybe even one more time for me!