There is something to be said about a film that can take an actor you aren’t usually a fan of (Sandra Bullock) and have you root for them. It’s a thing to take two actors who are greater known for their personas than the quality of their films and have them work well in a movie. Gravity does this so well you think of them more as characters for once.

A sign of a great director is someone with a style that can take a film beyond its script and be unique without having to say anything. Gravity tells us a lot visually with its use of silence. Plenty of other elements; sound mixing, special effects, and score coalesce in Gravity, and it adds up to the best film of the year. It’s a film that will be talked about for years to come, if not just for it being a technical and visual landmark. The movie is a tense thrill ride and it is not hyperbole to say that it kept my partner leaning forward on the edge of her seat the entire time. This movie is a ride, a few times frustrating, albeit appropriately so.

UPDATE: 2,067 days later.

7 Oscars, plus a nomination for Sandra Bullock I think this is an unexpected actor and director meeting at their peak, in a movie studio set 372 miles above the earth. Cuaron in between making one of the great apocalyptic films Children of Men and the boring passion project/ Netflix crusade Roma made a technically visually challenging original event film that audiences turned out in droves for then never saw again.

I saw Gravity once in theatres, then never saw it again. I don’t need to. It was perfect. Although I was thrilled with winning a free DVD copy that Warner Bros. sent me, pretty much everybody who has worked on the film and done some of their best work; among Sandra and Clooney, Cinematographer GOAT Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, the director’s son writer Jonas Cuaron (perhaps inspiring another father/ son duo to mistakenly write Solo: A Star Wars Story), and producer David Heyman. All have gone on to other things. But for one singular moment, in an early October weekend (that has since become a tentpole release date) everything fell into place.