Film: Gravity
Jul. 14th, 2014 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livReason for watching it: I was already kind of intrigued by the idea of a thriller set in more or less the real world space programme, and although I've seen some people nitpicking the science, I've also seen very positive reviews of it. Plus, it's Hugo-nominated and I am still hoping to vote in the long-form Dramatic Presentation category.
Circumstances of watching it: Was home withjack this weekend and we wanted to spend an evening watching a film.
Verdict: Gravity is an exciting and visually impressive blockbuster, without much depth beyond that.
Gravity lived up to my expectations. It's really exciting; I ended up with sore muscles from clenching my fists so much in all the scary bits. I don't know very much about the actual technical details of life in space, but I did enjoy the portrayal of something that's at least vaguely related to realism, not just far future ultra-shiny space opera type stuff. I can see why people said it should be viewed on the big screen, with all the vistas of earth from space and the magnificent space-stations and so on. And I liked the attention to detail in presenting people moving in a zero-G environment.
It's basically a two person piece, with Bullock as the lead and Clooney as the secondary character. Both are strong actors and yes, it is nice to have a female lead for a big blockbuster action thriller like this. Obviously the film doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but it doesn't have any conversations between men either, there are only two characters at all. I don't think it's a great triumph of feminism in that Dr Stone spends a lot more of her time crying and panicking and needing to be rescued than you'd expect of a male lead in an equivalent action movie. There's no gratuitous sexiness; I appreciate she's wearing a lot less under her space-suit than would be realistic, but there's no contrived set-up so she ends up naked or shots posed to show off her breasts. On the whole, I'm more interested in a story of Dr Stone showing emotional depth and being in terrible danger she only escapes by implausible luck, than I would be in a story of her surviving through sheer kick-assedness. I found the stuff with her dead daughter laid on the pathos too thick, but I thought Kowalski's sacrifice was very nicely done.
That's about all there is to the film, though. Pretty CGI, a fairly novel setting, reasonable acting, all in the service of a story with just about the most basic shape imaginable, that our hero survives a series of terrifying dangers to return home to safety. I enjoyed it but I didn't think it was amazing.
As for the Hugos, I think I'm going to vote for Pacific Rim, which has any number flaws but is also definitely not run-of-the-mill. Gravity second and then Frozen, which are both good examples of what they are, and I rank Gravity slightly higher because what it is, a real world science based thriller with a female lead, is more interesting than what Frozen is, a Disney movie that plays to Disney's strengths and says something intelligent about love. Assuming I probably won't get round to watching Catching Fire before the end of this month, and I am not at the point where I'm going to get into the whole comic-book superheroes thing in order to appreciate Iron man.
Circumstances of watching it: Was home with
jack this weekend and we wanted to spend an evening watching a film. Verdict: Gravity is an exciting and visually impressive blockbuster, without much depth beyond that.
Gravity lived up to my expectations. It's really exciting; I ended up with sore muscles from clenching my fists so much in all the scary bits. I don't know very much about the actual technical details of life in space, but I did enjoy the portrayal of something that's at least vaguely related to realism, not just far future ultra-shiny space opera type stuff. I can see why people said it should be viewed on the big screen, with all the vistas of earth from space and the magnificent space-stations and so on. And I liked the attention to detail in presenting people moving in a zero-G environment.
It's basically a two person piece, with Bullock as the lead and Clooney as the secondary character. Both are strong actors and yes, it is nice to have a female lead for a big blockbuster action thriller like this. Obviously the film doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but it doesn't have any conversations between men either, there are only two characters at all. I don't think it's a great triumph of feminism in that Dr Stone spends a lot more of her time crying and panicking and needing to be rescued than you'd expect of a male lead in an equivalent action movie. There's no gratuitous sexiness; I appreciate she's wearing a lot less under her space-suit than would be realistic, but there's no contrived set-up so she ends up naked or shots posed to show off her breasts. On the whole, I'm more interested in a story of Dr Stone showing emotional depth and being in terrible danger she only escapes by implausible luck, than I would be in a story of her surviving through sheer kick-assedness. I found the stuff with her dead daughter laid on the pathos too thick, but I thought Kowalski's sacrifice was very nicely done.
That's about all there is to the film, though. Pretty CGI, a fairly novel setting, reasonable acting, all in the service of a story with just about the most basic shape imaginable, that our hero survives a series of terrifying dangers to return home to safety. I enjoyed it but I didn't think it was amazing.
As for the Hugos, I think I'm going to vote for Pacific Rim, which has any number flaws but is also definitely not run-of-the-mill. Gravity second and then Frozen, which are both good examples of what they are, and I rank Gravity slightly higher because what it is, a real world science based thriller with a female lead, is more interesting than what Frozen is, a Disney movie that plays to Disney's strengths and says something intelligent about love. Assuming I probably won't get round to watching Catching Fire before the end of this month, and I am not at the point where I'm going to get into the whole comic-book superheroes thing in order to appreciate Iron man.
