Gravity

#50 at the time of writing.

Went to see this film, about two astronauts that get stranded in space, at the IMAX yesterday. Totally worth shelling out the extra cash to see it 3D on the big screen. It's more like a theme park ride than a movie. And what a ride!

The first 15 or 20 minutes is presented as one long shot with no cuts, extremely impressive given that the actors are floating around in zero gravity fixing a space station module with the sun setting on Earth in the background.

Sandra Bullock may have seemed like an unlikely choice to play the main character (alongside George Clooney), but she does fantastically well, even making you believe some of the bits that could have seemed silly in lesser hands. A dream role for her, I imagine. (Angelina Jolie and Natalie Portman were previous choices.)

But I suspect that this would lose much of its impact on a small screen. Like I said, more of a ride than a film. The writing felt at best formulaic, and at worst slightly annoying. The end could have been immensely emotionally impactful, but it somehow missed the beat. The music was once or twice intrusive. And the science requires a bit of suspension of disbelief - like everybody knows that tears in space don't fall!

However, undeniably extremely suspenseful, tense and intense. A great achievement. Well done especially to Alfonso Cuarón for realising such an ambitious vision.

Definitely worth watching the companion piece, Aningaaq. And the other, unofficial companion piece...