Gravity

Hello friends! How is your Christmas season going? Tonight we met up with some dear friends to see the movie Gravity. If you haven't seen Gravity yet, and it is something on your list to see, you definitely have to catch it while it is still on the big screen (in 3D). The cinematography is a shoe in for an oscar - Mother Earth has never looked so breathtaking. Sandra Bullock will surely get a nomination for her role as Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first mission in space aboard the Explorer space shuttle. Her accomplished counterpart is veteran astronaut George Clooney, who is assisting her in repairs to the Hubble telescope. Satellite Debris, from a Russian missile strike, is heading their way and mission control wants them to abort their mission. When high speed debris strikes their operation, Dr. Stone is detached from the shuttle and is tossed into space.

This is a classic story of a character trying to reach within to find the strength to overcome horrendous circumstances, to call upon their greatest measure of resilience, even when their future looks bleak. I cried several times in this film, it is moving on so many levels: learning how to live after our loved ones are gone, staring down our own demise, digging deep to find our strongest survival skills.

I'm not surprised to find out the film was directed by Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski, the masterminds behind Children of Men, one of the most visually stunning films I have seen. I love their style of shooting long, uninterrupted shots, so you can really feel the movement - I remember they used that technique in a spinning car sequence in Children of Men and their uninterrupted shots work especially well at capturing the audience's anxiety as we watch Dr. Stone struggle to survive. The film also reminds me that I'm glad my feet are firmly planted on this planet of ours. I'll leave space travel to the experts.

I'd give Gravity a 9/10.