Sandra Bullock has another huge hit on her hands. Everybody seems to love Gravity, and I’m no exception. I’d say I’m a mid-range Sandra Bullock fan. She rarely saves a film that’s careening toward the crapper from the first read-through (Demolition Man, Speed 2: Cruise Control), but she’s notched memorable performances in lots of great movies in different genres.
Sandra Bullock has another huge hit on her hands. Everybody seems to love Gravity, and I’m no exception. I’d say I’m a mid-range Sandra Bullock fan. She rarely saves a film that’s careening toward the crapper from the first read-through (Demolition Man, Speed 2: Cruise Control), but she’s notched memorable performances in lots of great movies in different genres.
Speed was a great action film, Ms. Congeniality and Two Weeks Notice were solidly funny comedies, A Time to Kill was a decent courtroom drama, and Bullock won an Academy Award for her performance in the sports-themed The Blind Side. She even wrote and performed her own song in The Thing Called Love.
As much as she mixes things up, Gravity is a departure for Bullock. The entire film takes place in space, and the only faces we see onscreen are Bullock’s and George Clooney’s. Well, the only living faces. There’s the half of a crewmember’s face that’s left after a mishap in outer space, and a corpse or two.
The plot is simple. Bullock and Clooney are the only two survivors of a space mission that’s about to end for Clooney, leaving him just shy of the record for having spent the most time in space. It almost never bodes well for a character when their profession is dangerous, and it’s their last day on the job, but Clooney packs a lot of charisma, charm, and character development into his short time onscreen. Even though their characters are hermetically sealed in separate space suits, he and Bullock have a lot of chemistry, which gives it more impact when his character waves bye-bye.
From then on, it’s all Sandra, all the time. Gravity is essentially Cast Away in space, minus “Wilson” the volleyball. Maybe Tom Hanks gave Bullock pointers when they were filming Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but she pulls it off. I’d seen two movies that day, and when the credits rolled I was surprised to see that 90 minutes had passed, which is high praise after more than four hours in a movie theater.
All the credit doesn’t go to Sandra. The film has wonderful pacing, and breathtaking cinematography and special effects. Weightlessness never looked so real, and our Earth viewed from space has never been more beautiful. Gravity is one of those rare occurrences when everyone involved seemed to be doing their best work. It deserves all the hype, and it’s good to see Bullock power past the rough spots in her life and land on her feet professionally. She makes it all look so easy, that it’s easy to forget how talented she is and, in Gravity, she’s as good as ever.
Lord Carrett