Gravity (2013 Alfonso Curaon & co-scr)

I can't believe I'd left it so long - Gravity is awesome, a breath-stealing marvel; ninety minutes of beautiful terror. The long takes draw you right in - the first one is thirteen minutes. Though other devices are used too - sometimes the camera is subjective. There's a whole lot of stuff going on here. Alfonso - who wrote the script with his son Jonas (who made interesting-looking Desierto and the stills-as-motion Año uña) - thought it would be quite quick to make it - it took FOUR YEARS. And when you start looking at the behind-the-scenes extras (which run longer than the film) you start to see why; for example, Chivo planning the lighting of shots as early as the initial modelling work by Framestore. This is a CGI film from  beginning to end, for sure, but there's also all sorts of ingenious human devices at work too, like cranes and variable lights and suspension and a light box in which the actors could see what we are seeing around them. In fact there's a really good argument for not watching any of these extras because it's better to maintain the suspension of belief that we are orbiting the earth. (Even the orbit was planned meticulously so we're over certain countries at certain times.) The Earth has never looked so beautiful. Chivo's work here is technically brilliant and so staggering.

Look at the graceful way it opens up:

00:41

02:16

02:48

03:07

I involuntarily rose to my feet on two separate occasions of extreme suspense.

Bullock and Clooney are great. He kept making me think of Buzz Lightyear!

In that great long take where Bullock thinks Clooney's next to him, he literally disappears from her side.

Soundtrack is a marvellous mixture of effects, silence and music. Skip Lievsay headed the sound team, Tim Webber the visual effects. Alfonso and Mark Sanger edited. He won Best Director Oscar and BAFTA, Best British Film, Chivo obviously won both too.

Did think after that NASA would have received large bills from both the Russians and Chinese after wrecking two of their space stations!

The 2001 moment. But also, the embryo moment.

Father and son set out to make a film that doesn't let up - they succeeded. But what the film's also about is life throwing things at you and how you deal with them... until the next thing is thrown at you. And about how the Bullock character through the film achieves a rebirth (or reboot, if you like).

Ms. Bullock's makeup is by Pamela Westmore, Wally's grand daughter, who was her prime makeup artist until 2015.

Alfonsito has written, edited and directed a seven episode series called Disclaimer, with Cate Blanchett, Leslie Manville, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kevin Kline and Kodi Smit-McPhee, photographed by Chivo and Bruno Delbonnel (?) for Apple TV.