Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission.
About halfway through Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, one of its embattled astronauts, upon being alerted to yet another imminent threat to their life, moans, "What now?" It's the perfect line in the moment, and it's very apt because "What now?" sums up the thrust of the entire film, which is about a series of cascading disasters that befalls a Shuttle crew while they're working on the Hubble Space Telescope. It also amounts to a two-hander since the only actors who log any screentime are commander George Clooney (who is, of course, on his final mission) and medical engineer Sandra Bullock (who is on her first). Questions of experience aside, once the space debris hits the fan, it doesn't take long for either of them to gauge how grave their situation is.
In the early going, at least, Bullock and Clooney have the voice of Mission Control (Ed Harris) to guide them, but that gets knocked out when all of the communication satellites in orbit get clobbered, forcing them to improvise. Not so Cuarón and his son and co-writer, Jonás Cuarón, who have carefully plotted everything for maximum drama and suspense. Meanwhile, his go-to director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki films it all with an eye toward communicating the wonder and terror of space travel simultaneously. As much as I would like to say more, it's probably best that I leave it there. If you're already inclined to see Gravity, then you should remain in the dark about as much of what happens as you possibly can. And if you're not inclined to see Gravity, what on Earth is wrong with you?