Gravity (2013)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects    I didn't see this the first time it came out in theaters because nobody could tell me anything except "you gotta see it in IMAX!"  Nothing about plot or character, just the spectacle.  Then it got nominated for ten Academy awards and came back to IMAX, so Rob and I wen to see it.

Holy shit, you guys.  Space is bad.  Like, I knew space was bad before I went in because of the killer robots and acid-blood aliens and whatnot but it's really really bad.  And IMAX 3D is as close as I ever want to get to space.

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is part of a team of astronauts up in space to add a new gizmo to the Hubble telescope.  The veteran on the team is Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) who is trying to beat the spacewalk record.  They get word from Mission Control that the Russians have blown up a failing satellite and that the debris has become a basically permanent cloud of shrapnel moving at 50,000 miles an hour 

FIFTY THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR

towards them.  So, of course, by the time Houston finishes saying that, the space bullets are already destroying their shuttle.  Dr. Ryan gets separated from her tether line and starts floating off into the void.  Kowalski uses his jet pack to grab her but they only have ninety minutes to get to safety before the space bullets circle the Earth and hit them again.  Since their ride home is wrecked, they have to make it to the International Space Station and use the Russian escape pod to get back to Earth.

I don't like to call it a phobia, because that implies irrationality and there is nothing irrational about not liking space.  Space shuttles and submarines are two places you will not find me because I do not like the idea of being in a small space surrounded by a big space that will kill me if anything goes wrong.  You cannot live in the ocean and you cannot live in space.  These are facts.  You know, now that I think about it, I'd rather take the ocean over space because at least then I'd have the faint hope that I'm actually some sort of undiscovered mermaid.  They don't have space mermaids.

This movie isn't even about space!  It's about letting go of the things that weigh down your soul, like grief and anger and helplessness.  They just set it in space because feelings are also horrible.

I don't know about its chances at most of the awards except for Visual Effects, which were amazing, and maybe Best Production Design.  It's hard to judge it because 99% of it was green screen.  As far as impressive achievement in CGI, though, it definitely qualifies.