[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ufsrgE0BYf0[/YouTube]

from the director of Children of Men.

and fuck this new board's youtube tag, btw.

So what, they lose communication and float around in space? No way Earth is sending up someone to look for survivors. That trailer was pretty much the whole movie then?

What exactly is that weeewwwww noise that everybody seems to think they need to put after explosions, now?

I feel like I need to start putting this picture with 90% of my A&E posts.

You have to give Cuaron the benefit of the doubt. I'm definitely interested.

I may never see this movie again - the in-home experience just won't do - but I feel privileged to have seen this. I don't understand how Cuaron did it. This movie is a fucking seminal human achievement, like penicillin and the automobile. Just holy shit!

so you liked it then?

I'm no one to listen to. I hadn't been to the theater since I took my boys to Hotel Transylvania last October. But yeah, it's an experience not to be missed.

Tomorrow. IMAX 3D for me.

saw this in IMAX 3-D. Can't imagine watching this any other way. Simply amazing.

Just watched it. I quite enjoyed it. A fun exercise in immersion. I could've done without some of the dialogue and music near the end, which were cheesy in the extreme, but overall a good time at the movie theater.

This sentence captures both the strength of this movie, and its weakest, ugliest truth: this, better than any movie I've seen, represents the stylistic shift towards film as "experiences," or experiential event,in order to push people back into theaters. I don't know that it was made with that intention, given the names attached, but that's what this movie is: an experience. And that feels exciting and engaging, right now, but it's a way of trading away other types of value in order to maximize the one.

This isn't a new phenomenon, nor is it necessarily a problem. So many of the greatest and most enduring films ever made were designed to be big-screen, in-theater experiences, taking full advantage of everything the format has to offer. I'm thinking of Tarkovsky's Solaris, Kurosawa's Ran, 2001, countless others. The immersive spectacle sales pitch isn't necessarily detrimental to the overall quality of the film. The question is whether this film is powerful enough in its emotional impact and storytelling to hold interest and survive in today's culture of compression and on-the-go entertainment. I think it is.

Yeah, I haven't seen this yet but I was wondering if it might be in the tradition of 2001: a Space Odyssey.

I think McP has a point. There isn't really a story; it is just characters navigating through one shitstorm after another. Those characters are thin. Clooney is the cliched American cowboy. Bullock's backstory is the stuff Lifetime movies are made of. The bullshit physics are glaring. And none of that mattered. I know I didn't care.

I still think it's worth every penny to see, but imagine this took place on a submarine, then a life raft, and finally a piece of Chinese driftwood. This story would be 2 stars, and it would feature Colin Ferrell and Amanda Seyfried.

If it did, and it was told with this flair and mastery of cinematic language, and was as dazzling and gripping and affecting as this movie was, then what's the problem?

There's a lot more to a movie than its story.

Not every movie should be judged with the same criteria. A movie which is apparently thin on narrative might be focussing on other modes.

I think it was how the movie immediately threw you into the danger within minutes without really knowing anything about the characters (and frankly it's hard to get personal when they're stiff inside a space suit for the first 45 mins) . Then soon later Bullock mentions the story about her daughter, and our concern for her is supposed to be amplified. And you just know they're going to milk that five line back story throughout the rest of the movie.

It just seemed forced. I wanted to feel so much more , but I didn't. Maybe there is a different reason why and I'm not figuring it out. I'll have to watch it again.

Spoiler: show

I suppose I like that obvious symbolism of rebirth.

1. Bullock air locked, floating like a fetus.
2. Baby stepping out of the lake

Her survival being that cathartic experience that will help propel her out of that state of paralysis that made her so dead to the world after her daughter passed. I love the result, but the journey getting there I felt nothing.