Mr. Prim and I saw this yesterday, in IMAX 3D.
I'm going to use spoiler text at the end (though I won't spoil the ending even there). But most of what I have to say isn't a spoiler.
Gravity is beautiful, tense, thrilling, and short (91 minutes, just right). Sandra Bullock is wonderful—I think it's an Oscar-caliber performance, which is difficult to pull off considering that so much of it is seen through the face screen of a space helmet, and so much is just heard as we see through her eyes. It is her story, her struggle, for the most part. George Clooney does fine work and exhibits his usual intelligent charm. There's almost no one else in the film—just a few voices on radio, but one sequence of that is especially moving.
The effects are brilliant, all of them. I completely bought that they were in zero gravity. Everything moves as it should; angular momentum is a bitch; flames look exactly like zero-G flames (spherical); tears float away from a character's face like little jewels.
I have some quibbles about motion from one place to another. There's a serious problem discussed in other places online—a fundamental impossibility that would be an issue in real life but is ignored here—but people pointing that out tend to end with, go see it anyway, you'll love it.
I would see it in 3D at least, if not IMAX 3D. It's meticulously done and the effect adds to the experience.
The problem discussed elsewhere, in brief:
On a couple of more personal notes: I enjoy seeing things "for real" that I've put a lot of energy into imagining; and I love that this space movie can't be considered science fiction. Everything in it exists now and is a commonplace to people who've lived and worked in space. It's a riveting story, and the setting is essential to it—but the setting is a real place, and the events are [almost] all entirely possible. It's no more science fiction than a story set in Antarctica or at the top of Everest is (just because of its setting) science fiction.
I think that's
really cool.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King