Cuarón's long-anticipated follow-up to Children Of Men plays as both an immediate, nail-biting thriller and a stunning technological accomplishment.
The visual effects are subtle and entirely convincing. There's never a moment when you won't believe you're in the thermosphere, dodging debris and fighting disorientation right along with the characters. Cuarón uses a graceful visual aesthetic to build suspense and keep us aware of various spatial relationships, favouring impossibly long takes to give each new danger an unsettling inevitability.
As a nervous first-timer thrown into the most terrifying situation imaginable, Bullock reaches back to the raw-nerve energy she brought to Speed almost 20 years ago. And Clooney invests a potentially clichéd role (he's basically playing astronaut Mike Dexter, Liz Lemon's fantasy boyfriend on 30 Rock) with boundless humanity.
There are things here that you've never seen before. This is a great, unprecedented picture. One word of warning, though: if you don't have vertigo, the IMAX 3D version may well leave you with it.
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