"Gravity (2013) Directed by Alfonso Cuaron #oscars #spaceopera #georgeclooney #sandrabullock

“You gotta admit one thing, you can’t beat the view!”.

Ten Oscar Nominations and Seven wins, 2014 was clearly the year of Gravity and in Oscar parlance it almost swept the board. Wins for the Director in the categories of Best Director and Film Editing (with Mark Sanger), the film also won for Best Original Film Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects and long time collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki finally secured a worthy Oscar win for his achievement in Cinematography. Oscar wins and trinkets should not be the benchmark by which a film is deemed a success or indeed an extraordinary achievement, however in the case of Gravity it fully deserved these and every other accompanying plaudit, for the film is near flawless from start to finish of it’s lean 91 minute running time and Alfonso Cuaron deserves every possible praise for pulling off the difficult feat of making a riveting and drama filled film set entirely in space and with ostensibly just one leading character such a terrific piece of cinematic escapism.

My one and only regret with Gravity was not having the opportunity to see this wonderful film on the big screen as it surely deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible but several re-viewings later just add to the majesty of the presentation, editing, cinematography and especially the Oscar winning sound mixing. But just one word of caution should you dear reader not have seen this film already: If you suffer from motion sickness in any way, beware, because you may be challenged by the Director’s almost non stop spinning visuals!

Written jointly by the Director and his son Jonas Cuaron with co-star George Clooney also un-credited as a further writing partner, the film is set entirely in space with only seven main characters, of which five are purely cameo or voice appearances and Ed Harris being the most recognisable and vocal as Houston’s “Mission Control”. Aside from this we have two of Hollywood’s finest in co-starring roles with co-writer Clooney starring as irreverent, talkative and crazy storyteller “Matt Kowalski” and Sandra Bullock as the nervous, motion sickness suffering newbie “Ryan Stone”.

The above opening paragraphs are taken from my original spoiler free review of "Gravity" penned and published nearly a decade ago, transferred to my Medium blog site on 16th January 2023 and which can also be read in full and for free via my Substack blog site and the link immediately below:

https://ramblingmusings666.substack.com/p/gravity-2013-a9f3f4e267cc

This spoiler free review is also integral to volume 2 of my 7 volumes of "essential film reviews collection". Only available currently in e-book form, each exhaustive volume of spoiler free film reviews is £4.99 however, should you have an Amazon Kindle "Unlimited" package, you can read each and every volume for free:

Volume 2

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C4J1S1TL

7 Volume Collection

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C4HZSTTH?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tukn

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
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