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Gravity

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Screenplay by: Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón

     Disaster movie fans, aspiring astronauts, and people who just like space in general, this is the film for you!
     Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are on a space walk fixing the Hubble space telescope.  A satellite that's been shot down by a missile has created a debris field, causing a chain reaction and hitting other satellites and debris at their altitude which flies straight toward them.  Much of the equipment and much of the ship gets destroyed and the mission must be aborted.  But with the ship destroyed too, it's up to Stone and Kowalski to figure out how they're going to get back to Earth.  
     One of the things I love about this film is that there are only two actors in the entire film.  Every other person listed in the cast is only a voice.  There are no extra characters in the film to deal with and there are no subplots that don't help advance the story of the film.  It's just a simple, but very intense, storyline involving these two astronauts, without any other fluff that some disaster movies tend to have.
     Both George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are terrific in this film, but Bullock especially.  Clooney doesn't have a whole lot of screen time which makes Bullock's character, the main character in the film.  She is truly awesome and delivers one of the best performance I've seen of all the films I've seen in which she stars.  
     The special effects are quite realistic, making it look like the film could have been shot in space.  As the characters twirl and fly away in space, it's almost as if we are flying around with them.  The stars and the earth look incredibly realistic as well.  
     If the film doesn't seem realistic enough to you yet, the use of sound and sound editing makes it seem totally real.  Space is a vacuum and there is nothing to carry sound, so it's completely silent up there.  In some of the shots, this is reflected, and reflected incredibly well.  There is one scene in which Dr. Stone enters the ISS (International Space Station) through the airlock.  Once she enters the airlock, there is no sound because the airlock is evacuated, but as it fills with air, the sound returns.  It's truly an amazing sensation to hear this transition from no sound to sound.  
     The absolute best aspect about this film though is the cinematography.  The opening scene is 17 minutes long and it is a single take.  I'm reminded of some of my favorite tracking shots, such as the Copacabana scene from Goodfellas and the opening shot of the Orson Welles film, Touch of Evil.  Until Gravity, these were my top two favorite shots from any film.  But the opening shot of Gravity is now my favorite single shot scene of any film.  You have to see the film in order to understand just how amazing this shot is because there are so many different things that happen in it.  And this isn't the only single take scene in the film.  It's loaded with them and many of them are quite good.  
      There have been many intense films that have been released this year, such as The Call and Olympus Has Fallen.  Gravity is far and away, the most intense film I've seen all year and quite possibly one of the most intense films I've ever seen.  The amount of suspense will have you hanging on the edge of your seat the whole time and you won't ever think about anything other than what you're seeing on the screen.  You'll even possibly forget that you're sitting in a chair watching a movie.  
      Gravity is a film that can't just be watched because watching it is like experiencing it for yourself.  I highly recommend seeing this film in IMAX because it will feel even more realistic to you than a normal theater setting.  Trust me, it's worth the extra money.  But even if you don't want to see it in IMAX, Gravity is a film that is not to be missed.  
      Being my absolute favorite film of 2013 so far, I can't tell you enough to see Gravity and therefore I give it an A+!

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