If nothing else, Gravity makes the case for throwing immense resources at true visionaries; the blockbuster craftsman as adventurer, Cuarón expertly blends the epic with the intimate.

For all its stunning exteriors, it's really concerned with emotional interiors, and it goes about exploring them with simplicity and directness, letting the actors's faces and voices carry the burden of meaning.

...a brilliantly tense and involving account of two stricken astronauts; a howl in the wilderness that sucks the breath from your lungs.

...it is a testament to what can be achieved with modern technologies set the challenge of putting the audience at the absolute centre of the most extreme jeopardy imaginable — to be adrift in space.