Gravity

Cinema has looked up at the stars for a multitude of scary reasons, be it the potential invasion of an alien race or the destruction caused by a big falling rock, but Gravity forgoes all of that by stripping things back to basics and exposing the life-destroying nature of space itself. There is no hope of anything living in that vast, black expanse, and by the end of this movie, you'll know that all too well.

Ryan Stone (Bullock, putting in a career highlight of a performance) plays a medical engineer on her first trip into space, accompanied by Matt Kowalski (Clooney, good but basically playing an astronaut version of himself), who is on his last. They and the rest of the crew of their space shuttle are on a fairly routine mission when the Russians decide to blow up one of their own satellites. The debris from the explosion causes a chain reaction, which then destroys their shuttle, cuts all communications with Earth and leaves Stone and Kowalski alone in space, with no discernible way back home.

As far as plot, or even subplot goes, there's not much to chew on here. There are some toe-dips into the likes of existentialism or the strength of a human's want to survive, but that's only there if you're looking for it. This is not a slight against the movie, as the same could be said for the likes of Jaws or Alien, that what you see is pretty much what you get. And oh boy, is what you see amazing! An absolute technical tour-de-force, with outstanding visuals and sound design, this is the kind of movie that IMAX and 3D was made for. Director Alfonso Cuaron has pushed the envelope in technical film-making before with Children Of Men, but he's in a league of his own here, constantly leaving you asking yourself "How did they DO that??"

When you get right down to it, for all the sci-fi frills, Gravity is more horror movie than anything else. A relentless, sweaty-palm inducing, nail-biting horror film where the bad guy is right above our heads all the time. Just keep that in mind while you're watching this landmark moment in cinema.