Gravity

 Gravity - 2013 - Alfonso Cuarón

I just watched this highly award-winning film—among them Oscars and BFCA awards, along with many others, and no fewer nominations in as many categories. As is well known, the film takes place in space, a few kilometers above Earth, where two astronauts are literally left floating adrift. The scenery is very good, I would say excellent, and the effects achieved during the impacts are magnificent. The collision scenes with space debris are genuinely frightening; they give a chilling realism to the danger represented in that situation, and watching them head straight toward you is a terrifying experience. But can you really see them coming? Given that everything is pitch black, or do you only see them when they are already right on top of you? We are talking about floating in space without any extra viewing equipment.

I didn't like the premise that sets the adventure in motion—a missile, a satellite, Russians, a chain reaction. It feels unreal, which isn't necessarily bad for a sci-fi film; even the US once exploded a comet using a missile, but that was part of an experiment and very far from the zone of artificial satellites orbiting Earth. The idea of a missile, satellite, Russians, and a chain reaction would have made sense to me if it had been set during the Cold War. But nowadays, it is common knowledge that disused satellites are often brought down guided toward the ocean. Perhaps, in my view as a mere viewer, I would have been more dazzled by something more natural or credible—for example, a collision with space debris, a crash with another satellite, an asteroid, or a meteoroid, or some malfunction that causes a sequence of events (in the style of the Final Destination horror saga).

I have never liked Sandra Bullock's acting in any of her movies—I've seen at least three—and in this film in particular, she spends the entire time complaining, sighing, and crying, even though as an astronomer (her role), she is supposed to be a trained professional prepared to go into space and face difficult situations. She spins around screaming, kicking, and thrashing; it looks more like a hysterical breakdown of an unhinged person than a desperate astronaut. George Clooney takes on a different role, and the voice of Mission Control—I didn't know it belonged to another actor, one who is much more professional in my opinion, Ed Harris.
Heading into the final third of the plot, it starts to decline compared to the beginning. The fiction takes on a less elaborate role (such as the method she uses for propulsion or the sheer luck she has in grabbing onto the Chinese station), and the music changes, no longer generating the emotion of the first part, which was far superior to the latter.

Although the film is science fiction and therefore allowed certain liberties, the science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson (who hosts the show Cosmos, following Carl Sagan) has pointed out a few issues that wouldn't hold up in a hypothetical real-life scenario. To read them, I leave the following link: http://www.abc.es/ciencia/20131007/abci-errores-pelicula-gravity-pelo-201310071414.html

I am also copying a link to a review I really liked, http://codigocine.com/gravity/, a review more fitting for a cinephile than a mere spectator like myself.