When "GRAVITY" doen't fail.

[farrandy]

Sorry, couldn't resist a reference to George Alec Effinger's novel.

Anyway, I went to see GRAVITY tonight. Everyone has already seen the trailers and so knows what it's about (and whether they want to see it), so I won't bother telling you what you already know. There is a word that I am trying use sparingly in my vocabulary because it is WAY overused. That word is "awesome"*. GRAVITY is awesome. Visually beautiful, tense and yes, at many moments absolutely terrifying. I don't often sit on the edge of my seat clutching my hat, but I did during several sequences tonight. I'm not going to try and convince anyone to see it if they've already made up their mind, but if you're wondering, I will nudge you toward giving it a try.

This year has been interesting for movies; with the theaters filled with TV Show reboots, giant robots and yet more comic book movies, I have seen two very good honest-to-Gaia science fiction movies. Movies where you don't have to leave your brain outside. The other was OBLIVION. Very refreshing indeed.


*Awesome: filling one with a sense of awe. Examples: the rising of the sun or the moon, the night sky, seeing Saturn's rings through telescope, a thunder and lightning storm in full fury (even at a distance), the Grand Canyon, a book that changes your view of the world, a piece of art that makes you weep. Movies can be awesome(especially the first time you see them); Lord of the Rings and Terry Gilliam's early movies spring to mind. Finding a quarter is not awesome. Cheese dip is not awesome. It's good, but its not awesome.

Comments

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, that sounds wonderful. Movies like that are rare.

I WISH I could see it, but I know it'd be a bad, bad idea. I don't cope with space peril very well. It's the unholy vampire-werewolf hybrid of agoraphobia and claustrophobia, more powerful than both. I can do Star Trek/Star Wars-type space action, but any sort of sense of being in the actual empty void of space is a big NOOOOPE. :( That brief ship/planet scene in the beginning of Avatar in IMAX 3-D was about as close as I can come without being too upset.

I REALLY liked Oblivion, which is saying something. Movies with a twist really tend to upset me, because they feel fundamentally dishonest and manipulative. Oblivion worked better for me, because it had the backdrop of the memory wipe that gave it this fundamentally unstable feeling, so that we KNEW there was all kinds of stuff we didn't know. I will have to see it again, maybe a couple of times, to really get a feel for the capital-T Theme, but it held together quite well emotionally. It pulled off several VERY difficult tricks, all of them pretty flawlessly. Can't describe more, spoilers.

Also, the Last Big Screw-You Joke was freakin' hilarious.

(I overuse "awesome" shamelessly. But I feel you on its abuse.)

[farrandy.livejournal.com]

I definitely wouldn't recommend the movie for either agoraphobes or claustrophobes. It manages to capture both the feeling of confinement and the big empty all to well.

I think I could call OBLIVION awesome--at least visually. I was reminded of a line I just re-read by Loren Eisley: "I am a student of desolation."

I up up with "awesome because I know it will eventually fade away, like the use of the word "like" as unnecessary punctuation. Language changes. I remember reading a story by Rudyard Kipling that I just couldn't finish. He was using so many turn of the century colloquialisms that I had no idea what he was saying. (It was supposed to be a humourous story so that may have been his point, a hundred years later I was just lost).