Gravity is, admittedly, a tough film to review. Especially since I believe it is more properly understood as a noir - not sci-fi - film. Sandra Bullock stars as Ryan Stone (Rhinestone??), an astronaut set adrift and trying to surviveness the vastness of space. Alfonso Cuaron is a powerful and great director but he plays it too safe by half in this film. There are many brave moments - the only sounds the audience hears are jets or debris or Bullock's screams. Nevertheless this realism is tempered by incredibly beautiful - but impossible - photography of space and Earth's sun. On the one hand, the story is fairly standard, even slightly regressive. Stone is not like Ripley in Aliens nor is a proto-feminist like Jodie Foster in Contact.
Still Bullock's Stone is touching and though Cuaron (as an obvious Catholic) lays the religious metaphors on a little too thickly for my taste, one does genuinely feel Stone's redemption as she emerges triumphant after her trials and tribulations. unfortunately, the dialogue is poor and sub-standard and plot twists (except for a crucial one near the end) are far too conventional and thus rob the film of it's potential, revolutionary aesthetic. That's Ed Harris's voice heard at the beginning.
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