Gravity (2013)

“Gravity” is exhilarating, the most damn entertaining, breathless film this year. The promos promise an outer space-set drama about two astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) caught adrift in space after a freak debris incident, their shuttle destroyed and crew members dead. It is that and a survivalist-horror film drenched in the gut-punch notion that surviving in space means having to continue to face life’s cruelties on Earth. The lean plot is near required as director Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”) plunges us into a 90-minute shocker that could break with too much filler. Among his sharpest onscreen moves: Simultaneously pitching “Gravity” as a near-wordless silent film of old, but shining new and large with spectacular, game-changing CGI, cinematography, and sound. He casts us adrift above the Earth, awed with wonder at our home and shocked by the absolute black void of space, and then miraculously takes us inside our hero’s space helmet with not a single edit. Bullock rips into her role -– raw, wounded, and shell-shocked –- deserves every award coming her way. As does Cuaron and co-writer/son Jonas who spin a perfect final scene uplifting in every sense of the word as it literally inverts the title. A+

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)

Comedy-drama “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” follows seven derailed-by-life Brits who leave Queen and Country for Jaipur, India, and promises of a sunny paradise resort for “the old and beautiful.” What they get is a barely-functioning pile of bricks and mortar, geese in rooms, and a bouncy 20-ish manager (Dev Patel) who pops off witticisms such as, “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, it is not yet the end.” Film-geek goose bumps boom at the cast: Maggie Smith as a racist grouch, Judi Dench as a broke widow, Tom Wilkinson as a judge on a quest, and Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton re-playing husband and wife as they did in “Shaun of the Dead.” Nothing as exciting as zombies here. We get stories of redemption, new love, and prejudices and xenophobia laid to rest, or revealed. All is alright in the end. Every Brit actor is naturally top notch, but Patel pulls a muscle to compete with his costars as the script has him running “Slumdog” style for his lady love. Nothing as exciting as that here either. My parents would love this film. B