Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron) [137.5 points / 16 votes]
"Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is the kind of movie that it would be easy to mistake for a mere “technological breakthrough,” like, say, Becky Sharp or The Jazz Singer (or Jurassic Park). (The Academy was probably grateful to have all those technical awards to shower upon it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if a few members didn’t feel sheepish about having already given Sandra Bullock her big award for The Blind Side.) It is a technological breakthrough, but the average viewer isn’t likely to sit through it consciously appreciating all the marvels unfolding in front of his eyes. This is both a $100 million experimental film and cinematic narrative boiled down to its essence, drawing the viewer into the skin of one person struggling to struggling just to stay alive. In lesser hands, dependence on so much technology, in an environment as fully, artificially constructed as this one, would mainly serve to get in between the director and the people he’s putting onscreen. Cuaron seems as totally in control and as intimately connected to his lead actress as Max Ophuls tracking Danielle Darrieux through a ballroom.
One way to appreciate how special a movie is might be to think about all the ways it could have gone wrong. I know that I am not the only Cuaron freak whose reaction to the trailer was, “Yeah, I’m glad he’s back, but I don’t know that I want to watch that for ninety minutes.” Yet I can’t remember the last time I’ve had my attention held that firmly for an hour and a half in a theater; Cuaron and Bullock and their other collaborators never let things go slack, never threaten to break the spell. There may not be a moment of transcendent relief in this year’s movies to match the sequence in which Bullock makes it inside the self-immolating ship and, before she’s forced to vacate it again, can strip off her space suit and just hold herself for a few minutes: Finally, to be able to scratch again! As series TV has seemed to gobble up the adult subject matter and serious narrative strategies and, increasingly, the serious talent, the people who finance big movies have become more and more dependent on technological gimmickry to offer an excuse for why anyone should ever visit a theater again. Gravity is a reminder that the best justification for technological gimmickry, and the best reason to visit a theater, are still the same: to make, and experience, great movies." -- Phil Dyess-Nugent
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