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movie: Gravity
2013-Oct-06, Sunday 05:14 pm"Gravity" is an excellent movie. (No spoilers below.)
I went to see it today to help distract my mind (more on that problem later). I had high hopes for the movie, and it was even more interesting than I expected. I like movies with few actors, and there are really only 2 characters throughout this movie. We hear several other voices, and we see brief glimpses of other faces, but the story moves along solely through the actions of its main character played by Sandra Bullock and its supporting character played by George Clooney.
Yes, there are very impressive special effects in the movie. It focuses less, though, on explosions and more on making us believe the environment. The characters spend most of their time in spacesuits outside of vehicles. The simulation of null gravity is the movie's most impressive feat, far better than we saw during "2001: A Spacy Odyssey" long ago. There was never a moment during the 90-minute movie (a duration of time with recurring significance within the movie) that I lost my belief that I was watching a story set in free fall.
I could easily quibble with the orbital mechanics used in the movie, but I concede that it's a necessary fiction in order to condense the story to a timeframe that's easily enjoyed. It's like the fact that asteroid belts are very, very sparsely populated, but movies always show them as a near-solid sheet of independently floating rocks. The danger is real, even if the portrayal is inaccurate. So too with the orbital mechanics in the movie. The movie makes up for this fiction by giving us realistic sound. Noises reach the audience only when there is 1) solid material in contact to conduct sound and 2) air near a character's ears. When either of these conditions is broken, then so is the sound. Very nicely done.
Sandra Bullock deserves an Oscar for the performance she gives as Ryan Stone, medical engineer. Astronaut Matt Kowalski is played by George Clooney, but his character is much less complex for this movie. The story is not about Matt; it's about Ryan. Yes, Ryan is a boy's name used for this girl character. Ryan's character, because she is untrained for the incidents in this movie, must cover a much broader range of emotions than mission leader Matt. Sandra Bullock does it convincingly. She was saddled with a flawed script at one point when she must cover some religious overtones that appeared nowhere else in the movie, but Sandra manages to draw it back into believability for her character.
I went to see the movie at my local Heights Theater. It would be worthwhile, though, to see it on a very large screen. I'm sure the visual environment would be even more remarkable in a wider field of view or in 3D.
I went to see it today to help distract my mind (more on that problem later). I had high hopes for the movie, and it was even more interesting than I expected. I like movies with few actors, and there are really only 2 characters throughout this movie. We hear several other voices, and we see brief glimpses of other faces, but the story moves along solely through the actions of its main character played by Sandra Bullock and its supporting character played by George Clooney.
Yes, there are very impressive special effects in the movie. It focuses less, though, on explosions and more on making us believe the environment. The characters spend most of their time in spacesuits outside of vehicles. The simulation of null gravity is the movie's most impressive feat, far better than we saw during "2001: A Spacy Odyssey" long ago. There was never a moment during the 90-minute movie (a duration of time with recurring significance within the movie) that I lost my belief that I was watching a story set in free fall.I could easily quibble with the orbital mechanics used in the movie, but I concede that it's a necessary fiction in order to condense the story to a timeframe that's easily enjoyed. It's like the fact that asteroid belts are very, very sparsely populated, but movies always show them as a near-solid sheet of independently floating rocks. The danger is real, even if the portrayal is inaccurate. So too with the orbital mechanics in the movie. The movie makes up for this fiction by giving us realistic sound. Noises reach the audience only when there is 1) solid material in contact to conduct sound and 2) air near a character's ears. When either of these conditions is broken, then so is the sound. Very nicely done.
Sandra Bullock deserves an Oscar for the performance she gives as Ryan Stone, medical engineer. Astronaut Matt Kowalski is played by George Clooney, but his character is much less complex for this movie. The story is not about Matt; it's about Ryan. Yes, Ryan is a boy's name used for this girl character. Ryan's character, because she is untrained for the incidents in this movie, must cover a much broader range of emotions than mission leader Matt. Sandra Bullock does it convincingly. She was saddled with a flawed script at one point when she must cover some religious overtones that appeared nowhere else in the movie, but Sandra manages to draw it back into believability for her character.
I went to see the movie at my local Heights Theater. It would be worthwhile, though, to see it on a very large screen. I'm sure the visual environment would be even more remarkable in a wider field of view or in 3D.