Something to watch tonight: Monday 22 December

Gravity (Cuarón, 2013)

Back in 2013, when the editor-in-chief and I were first dat­ing, we saw Gravity twice at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington. Both times we gripped each other’s hands through­out, the ten­sion and excite­ment were so great.

I’ve had the Blu-ray sit­ting around unwatched for more than a dec­ade as I had been wor­ried that the rel­at­ively smal­ler screen, the lack of immers­ive 3D, the domest­ic dis­trac­tions (cats etc.) would hamper the exper­i­ence, but I’m pleased to report that when we finally got around to it on Saturday night it was just as thrill­ing as it ever was.

Here’s my review from November 2013.

Is Gravity the first really new film of the 21^st Century? I haz­ard it may be. It is cer­tainly the first to har­ness the bleed­ing edge of the cur­rent tech­no­lo­gies (per­form­ance cap­ture, 3D, soph­ist­ic­ated robot­ic cam­era rigs) to serve a story that could only really exist in this form. Sure, once his ears had stopped bleed­ing Georges Meliés would totally recog­nise what dir­ect­or Alfonso Cuarón and his screen­writer part­ner (and son) Jonás are doing here, but he would be the first to put his hand up to say that he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Same for Kubrick, I suspect.

During a routine shuttle mis­sion high above the Earth, astro­nauts Sandy Bullock and George Clooney are strug­gling to make some adjust­ments to the Hubble tele­scope when Houston (a nicely cast Ed Harris) warns them of some incom­ing debris. A Russian spy satel­lite has been des­troyed by its own­ers caus­ing a chain reac­tion as the little bug­gers kick-off all over the place. Tiny frag­ments of satel­lite travel at leth­al speeds on roughly the same orbit and our her­oes have to get to safety before they risk being vaporised.

Which they don’t man­age – that’s roughly the first ten minutes. The rest of the film is them try­ing to get back home with no shuttle, no ISS and no NASA, just the two of them float­ing hun­dreds of miles above a docile look­ing plan­et and the prom­ise of a Russian (or maybe a Chinese) ship that can get them home.

What Cuarón has man­aged here – through a com­bin­a­tion of exquis­ite sound design, near-perfect VFX and his trade­mark long, flu­id takes – is to make you believe. The debates about the sci­ence have been going back and forth for a while but the film feels authen­t­ic which is the most import­ant thing, right? A simple story, made to look simple with the aid of about a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars, Gravity is a new bench­mark for cinema entertainment.

Also in that F&S review:

Andrew Adamson’s charm­ing adapt­a­tion of Lloyd Jones’ Mr. Pip (whatever happened to Adamson the live-action dir­ect­or?), Adam Sandler low point Grown Ups 2, excel­lent loc­al doc­u­ment­ary Antarctica: A Year on Ice, 3D dance movie Battle of the Year and Mark Walhberg and Denzel Washington team­ing up in 2 Guns.

Further reading

My light­hearted guide to the hol­i­day cinema options is up at RNZ. I won­der how many of these I will get to …

Editor’s note

Just a quick remind­er that I am tak­ing some prop­er time off this sum­mer. This will be the last news­let­ter for 2025 and nor­mal ser­vice will resume on 12 January. If you wanted to give a Christmas present that is a gift to myself as well as a loved one, con­sider click­ing the but­ton below and giv­ing a Funerals & Snakes paid sub­scrip­tion. They are highly motiv­a­tion­al, let me assure you.

Where to watch Gravity

Aotearoa: Digital rental

Australia: Streaming on SBS On Demand or HBO Max

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Starz

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky or NowTV

India: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Digital rental