Gravity (2013)

There is little doubt this survival in space drama, this mostly one-woman show starring Sandra Bullock, will be nominated for Best Picture. Director Alfonso Cuaron merges reality and special effect in such a brilliant way I almost was convinced he took his cast out into outer space to make this film. Every sequence delivers a highly emotional roller coaster ride and Bullock gives her best performance in her career. She commits all the way to an actual complex character, making me forget that this is the same woman we’ve seen in dozens of films. George Clooney is also good in this one, even if his minor role could have been played by anyone. At 90 minutes long Cuaron knows when to take us in and when to end the story at just the right moment. I left the theater inspired and still dazzled. Grade: A

Spoiler Alert
Even a great film like this has to have a flaw or plot hole, if you want to call it that. It bothered me for a second while watching the film and then I let it go. Later while thinking about the scene some more it bothered me again. But in the end it’s such a nitpicky thing it’s not really significant enough to lower my rating. It appears Ryan (Sandra) and Stone (George) are about to tumbling past the space station and miss their one chance for survival. Ryan gets snagged into a parachute but is able to grab Stone before he flies past. But Stone tells her to let go and that she needs to save herself because if she tries to save him he’ll only kill the both of them. Yet the problem is that in space they’re weight less. It would be very easy for Ryan to yank his arm and float him back toward the space station. Also as soon as she grabbed him he’d stop moving forward because he would be traveling at the same force as the space station and Ryan. Two professionals trained for space walking would know this and so should the film makers. I’m assuming it all comes to drama, that the story dictated that Ryan needed to make a choice and if Cuaron had bound himself to science he felt he’d hurt the story. I think they could have found a way to work around this but I can live with what happens in the movie as is.