Gravity is a cinematic triumph.  The film suspends the audience weightlessly through a terrifying yet beautiful interstellar journey that keeps the viewer clenching their armrest throughout its 90-minute run time.  Director Alfonso Cuarón showcases the significant technological advancements in filmmaking.  Cuarón effectively uses 3-D and CGI to fully immerse the audience in a complex movie that took four and a half years to make.

The film opens with a deceptively peaceful shot of Earth, as members of the crew of Space Shuttle Explorer slowly appear on screen.  Mission specialist Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is seen servicing the Hubble Space Telescope while veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) attempts to calm her down.  The scene is intimate, representing a sense of realism in this mainly computer generated movie.

Within minutes, this calm atmosphere is shattered when Houston sends them a warning that debris from a nonoperational satellite is headed their way.  The film then propels moviegoers into a suspenseful experience that transfers the adrenaline of a near-death experience onto the big screen.

Several critics are taking strong stances against the movie for its lack of scientific principles.  World famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has taken to Twitter with his complaints: “Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock’s hair, in otherwise convincing zero-G scenes, did not float freely on her head.”

Neil had 11 more tweets on the subject, and although his claims certainly have some truth to them, science isn’t the reason why viewers have paid over $31 million to see the film.  Truthfully, when you go to the movie theater and see a truck transform into a giant robot only to galavant around a city, part of your brain is dedicated to ignoring the difference between fantasy and reality.

Gravity is best defined as a physical experience that captivates the viewer by means of dazzling special effects and the most thoughtful use of 3D in a movie.  It is a tremendous story of survival portraying the most primitive and rudimentary aspects of human nature.