Gravity (2013) Reviews

• Great Visuals, Weak Script overall

  vikascoder2013-10-04

  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. The setting is spectacular and the premise is inventive. On every other front,the movie falters badly. Once you get over the initial wonderment surrounding the beautiful visuals, the chinks start showing up. Overall the script is very weak. Apparently the Russians bomb their own satellite by mistake and the debris is flying around at bullet speed, smashing everything in its way. Now upon hearing an emergency evacuation request, Kowalski (who has been wasting his precious thrusters all this while, floating around, spouting inane dialogs) orders Ryan (Bullock) to disengage from whatever she is repairing. Apparently Ryan has six months of training (only) and fails to be responsive and then the trouble starts. We come to know that Ryan has some head issues surrounding the death of her daughter as the writer felt a dire need to give Ryan some sort of existential problem in her head to make her character feel more human. Apart from this minor bit, nothing is presented in terms of character development for any other protagonists. Who is Kowalski? Who are the people who died in their space pods? No idea. Then the whole manufactured sense of suspense. Every time Ryan gets anywhere near the Air Lock (she does it three times), the debris presents itself like on cue every single time. Then a fire in a space station, then running out of Oxygen, then something then something. It's fine that they used some standard tricks but it all seems so manufactured and mechanical by the numbers suspense. Also at times I couldn't shrug off the feeling that what they are showing on screen is not actually factual. Do the controls on various international space stations have their national languages on them? Really? Maybe they do but seems hard to believe when 20$ phones are built with custom User interfaces with changeable languages, why have your billion dollar space stations with Russian or Chinese characters on your buttons totally beats me. Oh manufactured suspense owing to the whole can't-understand-this-thing machinery. The the dialogs when they come are nothing to write home about. Ryan has a hallucinatory moment when she talks to herself following some Mandarin Chatter on the radio which is cringe worthy. I wont even mention the in-your-face allegory about rebirth which is there for to make the movie seem deeper than it is. So what works for the movie? It's a cross between an IMAX documentary with some suspense elements thrown it which makes it look path breaking. But it's not. Not a bad watch but nothing to rave about either.

• Lost in Space

  BKTrayner2013-10-08

  The big "spoiler" is that this is a big budget Hollywood move with a preposterous plot and lots of special effects. The problem here is that nobody could possible survive through any of this, and the special effects become a substitute for any meaningful plot. Even taken on its own terms, the movie makes no sense. Sandra Bullock has become an astronaut but lacks even the basic skills for that occupation. She tells us she always crash landed the flight simulator, and we find her thumbing through an instruction manual about the size of the instructions for a DVD player to figure out how to safely pilot a space craft back to earth. She even picks the buttons eeny, meany, miney, mo style. Add to this the contrived scenario that she has not only lost a child but also is "revived" and given a reason to live by the now dead George Clooney appearing in a dream sequence. 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. The special effects are impressive, but what they've obviously done is use computer graphics to create all the weightless effects. As such, things remain weightless even when they shouldn't be, and you eventually become more interested in looking for the screw-ups than watching the movie. Please, please, please. Will someone make a movie with a clever plot that keeps you guessing to the end and with interesting and passably believable characters.

• Super special effects, weak story and dialog

  junkmail-3852013-10-06

  In segments, Gravity has marvelous special effects--truly a remarkable achievement. The weak parts of the movie are the contrivances that link these segments together, along with unbelievably bad dialog. (Maybe someone will be brave enough to register the contrivances formally as "goofs" here on IMDb?) No way could astronauts from the shuttle ever reach the International Space Station, but Gravity asks us to believe both this could happen and that an astronaut could then go on to reach a Chinese space station, too. These objects just don't orbit anywhere--ANYWHERE!!!!--near close enough to each other to make these events even remotely possible. Not only are their orbits vastly different in altitude and trajectory, it would be highly unlikely for them all to be near each other in the same orbit. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Gravity also asks us to believe that the orbit of the space debris intersected with that of the shuttle and was synchronized with it. No way could Ryan Stone figure out how to operate a Soyuz capsule in a few seconds of reading the manuals. 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). On balance: 7 stars.

• Gravity is Weightless

  tcara1112013-10-06

  Did those who've written glowing reviews of Gravity see the same movie I did? Look, I wanted to like this flick, I really did. And I don't want to rag on it, but if you're going to make a dramatic science thriller, you had better get it right or expect to catch it from the smart people. Despite the cosmic setting, the only star I can give Gravity is for the computer generated graphics.That said, this is not a movie for intellectuals and those of a scientific bent will be sorely disappointed. What made Ron Howard's Apollo 13 so gripping was its dramatic realism and superb acting. Unfortunately, none of those adjectives applies to Gravity, with the possible exception of some drama. However, for thinkers, effective drama requires an intellectual investment in the credibility of the story, the characters and the interaction between them. Intelligent humans need to believe that what is being depicted could actually happen. Unfortunately, the events depicted in Gravity are likely to alienate anyone with an above average IQ. Once one has acknowledged the impressive graphics, any anticipation of emotional investment is quickly dashed to smithereens by the unbelievably vapid and inane dialog. It is painfully obvious that someone with a double-digit scientific IQ appears to have awoken one morning and haphazardly decided to write a "space movie". The physics are off, the events highly improbable. The entire story demands a suspension of belief in reality. Worst of all, the dialog and interaction between the characters is so juvenile that anyone with a brain gets the immediate impression that the project is the product of sophomoric show-biz types who think that the way to move the product is to recycle hackneyed clichés, shiny objects and big explosions. Bullock's character, Dr. Ryan Stone, is so unprepared and emotionally disabled by adversity that it is impossible to believe that she would have been selected as a mission specialist. Yet, she manages to flit from one space wreck to another and yet another. She consults operation manuals in Russian and, later, Chinese, yet she is heard muttering "eeny meeny miney mo" while haphazardly pushing control buttons like some clueless chimpanzee. The space vehicle's communication equipment fails to pick up "Houston Control", yet, miraculously, is able to receive a bizarre Chinese comedy and howling dogs, which Bullock's character feels compelled to imitate. Clooney's character, Matt Kowalski, is such a clichéd hero that he is depicted as nonchalantly jesting with the hysterical Dr. Stone while he himself is drifting into a desperately life-ending situation. We are expected to believe that, despite having trained intimately together for this mission, these characters address each other by their formal titles and make clichéd announcements back to a non-responsive mission control. Kowalksi has waited until he's drifting to his death to ask where Dr. Stone is from and if she has any kids. Finally, director Cuaron makes a supremely lame attempt at cinematic iconography depicting Bullock floating in a fetal position, a la Kubrick's Space Odessey. And after having had such a bad day and having plunged to Earth in a flaming meteor-like reentry, Stone emerges, unscathed and barefoot mind you, from the ocean onto an idyllic, uninhabited beach like some primal human emerging from the sea. Now, I feel bad about feeling bad about this movie. And I respect Ms. Bullock and Mr. Clooney as actors. However, it is my humble opinion that actors must assume some responsibility for the roles they accept. This movie was so cringe-worthy that the only reason I sat through it was to see how ridiculous it would get. Alas, other than the black hole into whose abyss was irretrievably sucked away any hope I once had for discovering intelligent life in this movie, "Gravity" lacked gravitas.

• In Space no one can hear you – "ask for your money back!"

  shuttlealmanac2013-10-03

  In Space no one can hear you – "ask for your money back!" Disclaimer: Spoiler Alert - its horrible. I just left the movie theatre angry. I cant think of a time that's ever happened to me. Yes I may know more than the average Joe regarding manned spaceflight, after 30 years of writing about it. That doesn't mean the movie makers have to insult movie goers with the lack of any sense of reality. No wonder people don't think man landed on the moon. From start to finish there were blatant factual errors in everything from the laws of Physics, Engineering and Orbital Mechanics to the unidentifiable views of the earth. I recognized two views of the earth, one of Florida and Cuba, the other the Nile in Egypt. It seems the producers decided to mess with those as well, good luck recognizing them. I stopped counting errors after 50, by that point I was considering leaving the theatre, a few others managed to escape. I know at least one NASA Astronaut bragged about making a contribution to the film as a technical adviser. I wont name her because its embarrassing enough for her to know she did that. I always wonder why movie makers use Astronauts as tech advisors when they have no intention of actually using their contributions. Im not going to quote any of the script, why waste your time. It's a ranting monologue from an Astronaut with all of six months training at NASA to conduct an EVA at Hubble and who addresses her crew mates by their formal rank and last name only. Oh and magically during her six month training to fly on the Shuttle she managed to get a little Soyuz pilot training under her belt, very fortunate for her. Finally, the movie is poorly written, almost ad-libbed, poorly researched, with a story line that has no connection to reality. I wouldn't watch this a second time if I was paid to. At the end I was expecting to see a 2,000 year old arm from the Statue of Liberty on a beach, seriously. For a more representative vision of Spaceflight you may choose to watch the Simpsons episode where Homer and an inanimate carbon rod, save the Space Shuttle. I highly do not recommend this movie unless you download it for free off Pirate Bay or get someone else to pay for you. FYI – Im not a movie reviewer and I typed this out in five minutes, because I want my money back.