Before Gravity plays at Telluride this Saturday it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last night, and the reaction has been pretty ecstatic, to say the least. I think we're looking at a sure thing Oscar player right now in all the major categories- Picture, Director, probably even Actress, as Sandra Bullock is getting the best reviews of her career. A sampling from some of the critics:
"Suspending viewers alongside Bullock for a taut, transporting 91 minutes (with George Clooney in a sly supporting turn), the director's long overdue follow-up to Children of Men is at once a nervy experiment in blockbuster minimalism and a film of robust movie-movie thrills, restoring a sense of wonder, terror, and possibility to the bigscreen that should inspire awe among critics and audiences worldwide." (Variety)
"At once the most realistic and beautifully choreographed film ever set in space, Gravity is a thrillingly realized survival story spiked with interludes of breath-catching tension and startling surprise." (Hollywood Reporter)
"Cuaron shows things that cannot be, but miraculously, are, in the fearful, beautiful reality of the space world above our world. If the film past is dead, Gravity shows us the glory of cinema's future. It thrills on so many levels." (Time)
And for Bullock herself:
"...she's steely, vulnerable, occasionally funny and just about the best she's ever been in a dramatic role." (The Playlist)
"(Bullock) puts her impressively restrained performance to the fore just when the film needs her to, without straying from the character's slightly dour vulnerability or succumbing to focus-pulling bravado;..." (HitFix)
"Bullock is aces in by far the best film she's ever been in." (Hollywood Reporter)
