Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

I'm not too fussed about 3D over 2D but this thing got me good couple of times. I was literally ducking to dodge the flying shrapnel, I couldn't stop myself it was coming fast at my eyes, sharp too.

[Guest Jimmy McMessageboard]

I didnt notice the 3D pretty soon into the film. so it wasn't distracting. not sure it added much. but i do think imax is essential.

 

i'm going to see it again this weekend in matinee

[Atop]

perfect in almost every way, could have done without Clooney.

 

Crispin Glover would have been cool.

 

Cuaron is one of most amazing directors alive/ever and this film is a fucking triumph.

 

Bullock will win the Oscar.

 

EVEN THE SCORE IS AMAZING, FUCK YOU FOR THINKING IT ISN'T!!!!!

 

10/10

Zaphod, you are the ultimate hipster.

[Terpentintollwut]

I don't remember the actual quality of the score, I just remember thinking "if only there was no score on this" - only towards the end, I remember it being a tad too heroic.

[Guest Jimmy McMessageboard]

yeah the ending music sounded like the new moby single.

 

the sound design was good. i don't remember anything else about the score except for the bit i didnt like. which i guess is how a score should work

[sheatheman]

Man, those astronauts sure are tough. From now on when I walk outside, I will think about them floating up there, and I will think about how space debris is like an avalanche in space and how I wish I could see real life in 3-D.

 

Man, Sandra Bullock's character experienced a rebirth in space and had one hell of a ride on the way down and she isn't sad about her kid's death anymore. I am so inspired. Now I can learn from her experiences and live my life.

 

Man, George Clooney's character is such an old pro. He listens to country music just like Tommy Lee Jones from Space Cowboys. I like that reference. It's like they don't even have to write into his character at all because I have seen the other movie! I like how he was a mentor/potential love interest simultaneously, and I like the irony that they are literally the only people within hundreds of miles of each other and yet they are separated, hopelessly, by the vacuum of space. That is deep. Like deep space.

[Guest zaphod]

lol, this guy gets it

[MadameChaos]

You don't see real life in 3D?

[Alcofribas]

Man, those astronauts sure are tough. From now on when I walk outside, I will think about them floating up there, and I will think about how space debris is like an avalanche in space and how I wish I could see real life in 3-D.

 

Man, Sandra Bullock's character experienced a rebirth in space and had one hell of a ride on the way down and she isn't sad about her kid's death anymore. I am so inspired. Now I can learn from her experiences and live my life.

 

Man, George Clooney's character is such an old pro. He listens to country music just like Tommy Lee Jones from Space Cowboys. I like that reference. It's like they don't even have to write into his character at all because I have seen the other movie! I like how he was a mentor/potential love interest simultaneously, and I like the irony that they are literally the only people within hundreds of miles of each other and yet they are separated, hopelessly, by the vacuum of space. That is deep. Like deep space.

flol there's no way this movie is better than your post.

[Terpentintollwut]

You don't see real life in 3D?

 

When I was a kid, a friend of mine used to put on my red/cyan-Tyrannosaurus-shaped cheapo-3D-glasses and walk around going "I see everything in 3D! I see everything in 3D!" - I never told him.

[Atop]

This is what I think is so great about the film:

 

It has a documentary feel to it at times, which we have all seen fake versions of but Gravity isn't pretending to be real in that sense. It is essentially one act in space. The antagonist in the film is space. Everything else in the film is its bitch. While watching it I experienced fear and alienation on a level I had never before with a film. Yes, Bullock is the protagonist but she is depressed and hates being in space. She is not even really important to the story. She s there to move the film along in a way that makes us feel as if we have been in space but not bored by our stay. It is a hopeless film. It is saying that we cannot conquer something that we want to be able to. On many levels this is true and disheartening for an astronomy junky like myself. Until humanity comes up with inventions that create comfortable, safe environments to travel in, false gravity, traveling long distances in short amounts of time, 99% of what we are doing in our space programs will not help us to get any closer to any of true advancements in space travel. Yes the Hubble Telescope is an advancement but we have to be able to travel to these places we see for them to be anything more than puzzle pieces and objects that are beautiful to look at. This film washed over me and felt like it lasted 20 minutes. It also had a sense of infinitude, the size of outer space always looming in the back. The action drives this film in a way that didn't feel like an action film. The setting of space gave it the perfect environment to not need to rely on normal screenwriting. The effect of seeing no gravity being inflicted on a character for that much time was so alien to myself, it totally warped my sense of physical motion. All of this combined created the perfect space experience for myself. I do agree that calling this sci-fi is incorrect, this is all contemporary and is not fantastical in any sense other than this would never happen the way we see it on the screen. Or at the pace it is set, these events wouldn't happen that quickly. So what made it so great for myself is the effect it left me with. I was so glad to be on earth after I left the theatre and upset that we have not come further along in our scientific endeavors. I also thought it looked fucking beautiful.

The end really hit me, as unlikely as it would be for her to make it back, I felt the weight of the earth's pull on her body. It sent chills throughout my body.

 

[chaosmachine]

Taken for what it is, this movie is enjoyable, but... why can't we get some actual sci-fi, with actual sci-fi worlds... blade runner, total recall, brazil, gattaca, matrix...

[Redruth]

maybe our failure in space is the reflection of our failure on earth? the sheer incompatibility of the space environment is clear sign to me. we have already been given gifts which we have only begun to truly understand and which we've squandered, we seem not to appreciate them? always the search for greener pastures and in our maelstrom we have turned them all to mud. simple pleasures allude us more and more every day and we have lost sight of who we r, who we could be..

[sheatheman]

This is what I think is so great about the film:

 

It has a documentary feel to it at times, which we have all seen fake versions of but Gravity isn't pretending to be real in that sense. It is essentially one act in space. The antagonist in the film is space. Everything else in the film is its bitch. While watching it I experienced fear and alienation on a level I had never before with a film. Yes, Bullock is the protagonist but she is depressed and hates being in space. She is not even really important to the story. She s there to move the film along in a way that makes us feel as if we have been in space but not bored by our stay. It is a hopeless film. It is saying that we cannot conquer something that we want to be able to. On many levels this is true and disheartening for an astronomy junky like myself. Until humanity comes up with inventions that create comfortable, safe environments to travel in, false gravity, traveling long distances in short amounts of time, 99% of what we are doing in our space programs will not help us to get any closer to any of true advancements in space travel. Yes the Hubble Telescope is an advancement but we have to be able to travel to these places we see for them to be anything more than puzzle pieces and objects that are beautiful to look at. This film washed over me and felt like it lasted 20 minutes. It also had a sense of infinitude, the size of outer space always looming in the back. The action drives this film in a way that didn't feel like an action film. The setting of space gave it the perfect environment to not need to rely on normal screenwriting. The effect of seeing no gravity being inflicted on a character for that much time was so alien to myself, it totally warped my sense of physical motion. All of this combined created the perfect space experience for myself. I do agree that calling this sci-fi is incorrect, this is all contemporary and is not fantastical in any sense other than this would never happen the way we see it on the screen. Or at the pace it is set, these events wouldn't happen that quickly. So what made it so great for myself is the effect it left me with. I was so glad to be on earth after I left the theatre and upset that we have not come further along in our scientific endeavors. I also thought it looked fucking beautiful.

The end really hit me, as unlikely as it would be for her to make it back, I felt the weight of the earth's pull on her body. It sent chills throughout my body.

 

 

You've made a case for yourself and I see where you are coming from, and the enjoyment I derived from the film was in that regard.

 

I just think most of us want this:

 

some actual sci-fi, with actual sci-fi worlds... blade runner, total recall, brazil, gattaca, matrix...

 

Ridley Scott dropping the ball so hard makes me wonder when the next epic sci fi will come along.

maybe our failure in space is the reflection of our failure on earth? the sheer incompatibility of the space environment is clear sign to me. we have already been given gifts which we have only begun to truly understand and which we've squandered, we seem not to appreciate them? always the search for greener pastures and in our maelstrom we have turned them all to mud. simple pleasures allude us more and more every day and we have lost sight of who we r, who we could be..

 

YOU are right. There is something HERE that we are missing totally.

[Guest Jimmy McMessageboard]

i bet you hated elysium

[Candiru]

Gravity is waaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than Elysium, though. I enjoyed Gravity too much to nitpick over it.

[Atop]

Elysium is slow and poorly written, with no big classic sci-fi anything.

 

Boring robots and rip off Omni /Heavy Metal mag designs.

 

And I do want way out nuts to the wall sci-fi.

 

So many great books that could be easily adapted, or at least with enough money, made well.

 

My short list:

When Worlds Collide

Rendezvous with Rama

The Stars my Destination

More Than Human

Dr Adder

We

 

I redact ever having referred to Gravity as science fiction.

[azatoth]

I'd rather see some of my favourite sci-fi novels be adapted as mini-series where the rich worlds could be explored more than a condensed 2 hour movie that will anyways concentrate on the wrong things from the book instead of the things that made it good.

With the success of series like GoT and the new way people consume entertainment with things like on-demand streaming, I think it's more viable and enticing to start spending the big dollars on big series instead of one big blockbuster.

[Guest zaphod]

i'd prefer an hbo series of gene wolfe's book of the new sun, steven erikson's malazan book of the fallen or william gibson's bridge trilogy. pretty clear that sf films are almost always going to fail, there's just not enough time to develop them and there's too much money at stake and not enough creative freedom. although, i still want to see an adaptation of the forever war.

[dr lopez]

starship troopers was the last good sci fi film

 

precisely because verhoeven doesn't give a shit about anything except what verhoeven gives a shit about.

[awepittance]

i felt like i just saw a really excellent tech reel on an imax screen.

the '3d' in this movie is not more impressive or deep looking than a typical post converted movie you'd see, maybe slightly better like on par with Prometheus just in terms of depth or stuff coming out of the screen.

Anybody else annoyed that the IMAX bumper graphics countdown looks like 100x more 3d and deep than the movie about to follow it? Why do they dial down the depth so much in '3d' movies? It's extremely weird to me how weak-sauce the depth is. And I'm not just talking about the widely agreed upon (Stupid) convention of not having stuff fly off the screen because it looks 'gimmicky'

anyways 3d complaints aside, the movie was very enjoyable. IT wasn't so much the forced exposition that was jarring to me (nor the country music) which admittedly was odd, but what felt weird to me was why they had to be talking so much in general. The movie could have used a whole lot less dialog. In 2001 Kubrick knew to take care of any of the exposition of the 2 main characters on the ship with that TV news segment, after that almost every segment in space has zero talking. This is how you add tension and atmosphere to a movie. Talking about Mardi gras and how attractive you are does not, it's actually really cheesy and unrealistic, not to mention Clooney's bizarre wooden acting (am i wrong or does this director have a history of choosing wooden leads? Clive owen as the lead in Children of men felt mis-cast and wooden as shit to me)

I don't know, I felt like the movie mostly blew it's load even in terms of high stakes tension right after Clooney found Bullock after she lost contact the first time. That scene of her spinning for about 1 minute straight was the height of the movie for me, it made me extremely uncomfortable and panicked feeling

Honestly also some parts of the movie gave me cheesy vibes, while fucking beautiful looking in comparison still had some of that fake-space scifi space walk scene from Brian Depalma's mission to mars. They also showed too much happening, which made the tension and atmosphere weaker imo. Why did they have to show so much detail happening in the background the whole time? When the space station literally shredded behind her, it seemed designed to increase the tension but felt oddly cartoonish like the scene in War of the Worlds when Tom cruise runs down the street while all the shit blows up around him. Sometimes also it felt like they wanted to do more money shots than necessary. Like did we really need to see the cgi rag-doll double doing that 'hang off the airlock' move twice? It looked kinda real the first time, but by the second it looked a little more like Matrix reloaded. I think if this movie followed the less is more route and actually took more of a cue from 2001 it would have been a 9/10 easily .Instead it's more like a 7

and for me the cheesiest moment of the film was during a mostly successful emotional moment while she was hearing that Chinese guy singing. She was already feeling all sentimental for earth when she heard the dogs and the singing and then when she's like 'is that a baby' i felt like it just took it over the edge, but then i remembered the emotional climx of children of men was a very obvious strange cgi child birth scene. I feel like the director of the movie has things in common with modern Peter Jackson.

[Atop]

"Oprah moments"

[BCM]

starship troopers was the last good sci fi film 

 

precisely because verhoeven doesn't give a shit about anything except what verhoeven gives a shit about.

District 9 was the last good sci-fi film imo

[yshf]

District 9 was the last good sci-fi film imo

agreed - (either that or moon)

[kichiguy]

people complaining about no good sci-fi this year need to watch europa report.

 

twice!