Gravity Preview

Gravity is the harrowing tale of the survival of brilliant medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in space.  This is Stone's first mission to space and Kowalsky's last before retiring.  While out on a seemingly routine spacewalk, tragedy strikes.  Debris from a nearby Russian satellite that has just exploded destroys their ship and the space station, killing the rest of the crew and leaving Stone and Kowalsky drifting away by themselves.  

This looks like a combination of Apollo 13 in which astronauts were trapped inside their damaged shuttle and Open Water in which two scuba divers are stranded in shark infested waters with no land in sight.  Gravity appears to be the worst of both of those scenarios.  The film is nominated for ten Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director (Alfonso Cuaron), Best Leading Actress (Bullock), and Best Visual Effects.  The creative team that worked on Gravity have also worked on the visual effects in Batman the Dark Knight, Avatar, Superman Returns, several of the Harry Potter movies, Transformers, Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, just to give you an idea of why this might be nominated for an Oscar in this particular category.

This is a tough film to preview since we really aren't given too much to go on by the trailer.  The astronauts are on a routine spacewalk, their ship is destroyed, and two of them are left floating in space.  It sounds absolutely terrifying and the brief clip definitely does its job well making me want to rush to the theatre to see what happens.  We already know the movie should be visually stunning, so I will be seeing this in 3D.  The rest of it, well that will be up to the two stars of the film, Clooney and Bullock.  And they are both wonderful actors.  This is Bullock's second Oscar nomination for Best Actress.  She won her first Oscar for her performance in The Blind Side. Clooney has been nominated for eight Oscars and won two of them, Best Film for Argo with Ben Affleck and Best Supporting Actor for his role in Syriana.  Clooney was not nominated for an Oscar in Gravity.  This is the first time Clooney has worked on a film with his longtime friend Bullock.  They almost had a chance fifteen years ago, but Bullock lost the leading part in Out of Sight to Jennifer Lopez.  This has all the makings of another movie that terrifies you without and blood or violence or even a villain to root against.  I predict 4 stars and that Gravity will be worth the money in the theatre, a movie I'd love to see again, and one that has a good chance of finding a home in my personal collection.  Am I right?  We shall see.