Gravity – Movie Review

Gravity opens with the most jaw-dropping special effects shot since Sam Neill saw his first Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park. Planet Earth stretches out before you, whole, three dimensional, real. In one long, unbroken shot we are introduced to our lead characters as they float through the void, above the audience, in an utterly convincing depiction of modern space flight. Instantly the film makes the best use of 3D seen in the modern age – this film needs to be seen in the cinema.

Our lead characters, Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), are doing routine repairs on the Hubble space telescope, when they get word that a cloud of debris from a damaged satellite is heading their way. As the previously routine mission spins out of control the visual virtuosity continues. Director Alfonso Cuaron throws every trick in the book at the audience – space debris flies towards the screen, the camera flows seamlessly through an astronaut’s visor and into a POV shot, and floating water bubbles land on the camera lens. Gravity is an aggressively stylish film that rivals the work of Fincher and Scorsese for flair and audacity.

Praise is also due to stars Bullock and Clooney, as the jittery rookie and smooth old-hander respectively. Clooney, playing to his strengths, slides back into the easy charm shtick that has served him so well since ER, and reminds you what a likeable screen presence he can be. Bullock, meanwhile, is a revelation, in the more challenging of the two roles, and gives a performance which a) finally puts the ghost of Miss Congeniality to bed and b) must now be considered the hot favourite for Best Actress come awards season. (Special mention must go to the scene where she finally breaks down under stress, which had hardened cynics all around – including myself – pretending they had something in their eye.)

Sadly the script, and the science, can’t quite live up to the quality shown elsewhere. There is an inherent tension in the core premise between scientific realism and disaster movie thrills, and the film expends so much energy trying to create a sense of scientific verisimilitude that it’s especially disappointing when it doesn’t live up to its own exacting standards. As the film moves into its third act, implausibility becomes an increasing problem, and it’s sad that a film which impresses so much with its credibility at the beginning, has you crying “Bullshit!” at the last moment.

There are also moments where sentimentality, cheesiness and cod profundity threaten to overwhelm the good that has gone before. One particular moment, where Clooney is forced to spell out a message that really should have been implicit, is awkward and jarring.

It will be interesting to see how posterity treats Gravity. My instinct is that, on the small screen, and in 2D, its flaws will become glaringly obvious. Don’t let that happen to you. Gravity doesn’t reach the heights scaled by 2001, and never really properly makes its mind up as to whether it wants to be a philosophical science drama or an action thriller. It is, however, a towering visual achievement, an overwhelming spectacle, a rip-roaring action movie, and the best fun I’ve had in a cinema in at least six years.

5/5

This American Podcast

Something which I really enjoy is the good old fashioned podcast. Much maligned, I think it’s an unappreciated art form and perhaps surprisingly therefore one of the most readily accessible. You can get hours upon hours a week of entertainment from these little undiscovered gems and the best part is that more often than not they’re free. To me it’s crazy that some people have never even listened to one. The motivating factor for me writing this article is one show in particular, This American Life. This is a podcast that a friend of mine introduced me to a couple of months ago and is something I’ve devouring voraciously ever since.

Presented by Ira Glass for WBEZ 91.5, a public radio station in Chicago, and with over 500 episodes, this is a show I find almost impossible to categorise. Every single episode is about a completely different topic (titles of the shows ranging from Small Scale Sin to Kindness of Strangers and Running After Antelope) and combines interviews, music, radio plays and much more. It is, perhaps, through the interviews though where I feel this show is at its strongest. What I really enjoy about these is the way the sound-bites are interspersed with insightful and a lot of the time witty musings from Glass.  This is a show that provides a truly authentic and unpretentious slice of Americana but goes beyond that, exploring themes that resonate with people throughout the world. I have found myself absorbed by topics as esoteric as growing up in the Jehovah Witness faith to computer hacking.

In a country that is so dependent on the power of advertising, a public radio station such as WBEZ thriving is a testament to the strength of its programming. This American Life is perhaps at the core of that programming and subsequently has become popular not just as a result of syndication across the United States, now with over 1.8 million listeners, but podcasts and the Internet has given this show a global audience with it being downloaded by 900,000 fans worldwide.

I strongly urge you to give it a try and immerse yourself in This American Life. Episodes are available weekly, and are downloadable from iTunes (other stores are available) but if like me you listen to one and have the compulsion to listen to them all you should consider buying the This American Life app from the iTunes store. This awesome piece of software will give you access to all of the 500-plus shows for the ridiculously good price of £1.99. Further details can be found via the website, www.thisamericanlife.org, if you need any more convincing

Man Of Steel Review.

The Man Of Steel. Superman. Kal-El. The Last Son of Krypton. The Big Blue Boy Scout. Sent as a baby by his parents to seek refuge from his dying home world, young Kal-El is raised by humans Martha and Jonathan Kent as their own son, Clark. Gifted great power by Earth's yellow sun, the young Kryptonian becomes Superman, a hero and an incorruptible symbol; fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. You know this already. This is well-trodden ground. Any film trying to re-tell Superman's origin story desperately needs to add something new to surmount the overwhelming sense of familiarity. Man Of Steel fails miserably.

 

Man of Steel copies Batman Begins' structure of front-loading its opening hour with prologue mixed with flashbacks, but whilst in Batman Begins Bruce Wayne's flashbacks were prompted by his conversations with Ducard, and used Bruce's relationship with his father to explore Bruce Wayne's own psyche, in Man Of Steel Clark Kent just wanders around by himself, remembering his childhood. He doesn't actually have a conversation with anyone until 25 minutes after his first appearance. This bizarre decision robs the flashbacks of any context, because the adult Clark has no-one to discuss his memories with.

 

Therefore we learn about the young man and his father, but nothing about the man he has grown up to be. It's a fatal problem, as we're left with a blank page where our lead character should be.

 

Furthermore, whilst Kevin Costner is perfectly cast as Jonathan Kent, Clark's adoptive father, there's way too much of him. The very fact that he's played by Kevin Costner tells us everything we need to know about this character, and his character is given no space to develop beyond this despite his significant screen time.

 

This first hour kills the film. It's overlong and almost entirely redundant, and the rest of the film, when the plot actually starts, feels rushed by comparison. Scenes lurch drunkenly from one to another without impact or suspense, and it feels like whole chunks have been cut out of the film to make it fit an already hefty 243 minute running time. Key plot points are introduced and then discarded (much is made early on of the potential impact the discovery of alien life could have on society, but once Superman is revealed to the world the reaction of society is never once shown or discussed), and some of the plot holes boggle the mind.

 

With so much time devoted to the prologue there's no time to get to know any of the characters we are then expected to care about once the actual plot kicks in. This problem is compounded by several poor casting choices. Russell Crowe delivers an enjoyably tough, if ultimately unconvincing take on Jor-El, but Amy Adams singularly fails to muster the required bolshiness to convince as Lois Lane and Laurence Fishburne is a painfully timid and bland Perry White. These are all fine actors, but they each get so little to do except run and shout that their performances have to be judged against the original comic book characters. On that basis, they fail.

 

Michael Shannon, as the villainous General Zod, fares little better. Shannon normally has a commanding presence, but the the film's attempts to give him credible motivations founder under director Zack Snyder's weirdly selective ADD disorder. An early opportunity to explore Kryptonian society and give his motivation a proper underpinning is abandoned in favour of an extended chase ripped straight off of Avatar. Zod's actions therefore make little sense and he ends up seeming even more ludicrous than Terrence's Stamp's portrayal (and not in a good way).

 

The one thing that isn't rushed are the action sequences. With the exception of one stand out, four-way Kryptonian smackdown that consciously echoes Superman II, all succumb to the Transformers CG overkill syndrome. Most blockbusters now end with 25 minute CGI cartoons and Man Of Steel is no exception. There are so many explosions and buildings blowing up that I estimate the civilian death toll must have been in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands (this, of course, is not commented on) and yet it's devoid of tension because the main character's invincible and the other characters are all just cyphers. Superman gets thrown through something and then someone else gets thrown through something and something blows up...

 

At the time of writing I finished watching it 111 minutes ago, and I already can't remember what happened. It's that boring.

 

Rating: 1/5

 

 

Reviewed by Andy Croucher.