The Movie Gravity: All Style And Formula Thrills With A Shot of Vodka And A Tiny Twist of Substance

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON TWEETS BIGGEST ERRORS IN GRAVITY

SIGN OF OUR TIMES: LONELINESS/ ISOLATION WITH HIGH ADRENALINE IN A VENUE OF OUTER DARKNESS....SOUND ABOUT RIGHT?

BEEN MIA RECENTLY while working to pick up the pieces of my life back in Tennessee.  There's still a pile of undealt-with mail on my dining room table and several unpacked L.L. Bean bags with hiking gear and yoga clothes in my bedroom.  Though I'm getting things in order,  it's slower than I'd like in almost 90 degree weather.

 I did manage to watch both the tail-end of the Tennessee-Georgia SEC football game with HG this afternoon as well  as catch the 4:30  screening of  Gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.  After reading several glowing reviews---and seeing a 98 score on Rotten Tomatoes,  I decided to drop everything because it had to be the blockbuster/must-see survival thriller of the year and one that will run away with the Oscars/

Boy was I disappointed.  Sure it's got Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in tethered spacesuits twirling wildly out-of-control  around wrecked space stations and space debris with almost no oxygen.  While the special effects are fine and dandy,  the rest of the movie is short on substance no matter how you cut it.

See it if you must, but the best of the  movie is in the trailer below.

The best part for me was after Clooney unhooks his tether from Bullock---so she can survive and he  can float away and die looking down on the sunrise on the Ganges.  He comes back as a apparition into the Russian space capsule she's managed to find and climb into as she starts to give up and asks if she's found the world-class vodka that's stashed there. She replies in the negative but undeterred, he finds it.  He takes a swig as only a ghost can do, inspires her to go on living---in spite of her toddler daughter's mysterious and sudden death---and get back to planet earth. He then disappears back into the darkness  and whatever afterlife from whence he came.

The only reference to God or faith came when Bullock's character said in a moment of complete despair that no one would be praying for her and no one had taught her to pray when she was growing up.  In other words, sadly, she was dangling by a dark thread even before she went into space.  One can only hope her thankfulness at getting back alive might have caused her to look into her spiritual impoverishment but the movie stops before that.

Anyway, it was  very long on action and short on characters the audience can sink its teeth in.  Bullock outdid herself in The Blind Side, but under-did herself here in spite of her non-stop action and fairly decent acting.  Clooney played his supporting role fair enough
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Below the clip that hooks you big time with the rest of the movie just more of the same adrenaline only with  diminishing returns.  If you're really stretched for cash, just go have a double espresso before going for a walk across the Henry Hudson Parkway....