Critics are blown away by Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, an orbital thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.
Kenneth Turan, with the LA Times, writes that “words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates,” while Richard Roeper describes it is among “the most stunning visual treats of the year and one of the most unforgettable thrill rides in recent memory. You’ll have to remind yourself to breathe during some of the more harrowing sequences.”
The NPR’s Bob Mondello says that “Doctoral theses will be penned on the breath-catchingly realistic, gorgeously choreographed, entirely mesmerizing opening“, and the NYT’s A.O. Scott writes that Cuaron “succeeds by tethering almost unfathomably complex techniques—both digital and analog—to a simple narrative.”
Jocelyn Noveck with the AP adds that what you can’t know, until you’re in the theater, “is just how much you’ll feel like you’re up there in space, feeling its vastness, perhaps even feeling cold.”
(Some folks keep talking about astronomers exposing factual errors in the movie. Which is fair enough. The beautiful thing about science, though, is that gravity gets to expose factual errors in astronomy.)