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One after another, Hollywood churns out films that are either sequels, prequels, remakes, or reboots. It seems there is a real problem with writers these days, as the ability to make anything original seems to be in very short supply. Want to make a summer blockbuster? Put a costume on, spend some time setting up a story, and then spend sixty minutes blowing everything up. Superman, World War Z, Elysium, and Iron Man 3 would be some good examples. All these films were visually satisfying, but for this viewer, emotionally empty. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy all of them in some way, along with the popcorn and Milk Duds.

Now we have Gravity, and instead of characters who are larger than life, we have Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone. Maybe that's a key here...the lead is a woman, and while men are logical, women are emotional. So it's easier from that standpoint for an audience to build an emotional connection. Stone is any of us, if we somehow were brilliant enough to make it in to Space, yet she still crashed the simulator, every time. We can relate.

So why do I think this movie is a 10? It really isn't perfect. How much abuse can a person's body take without breaking? This, like many other films, subjects its stars to some serious body blows. There are things that are repeated in its zippy 90 minutes. Still, it had me holding my breath, literally, more than any film since Hurt Locker. Gravity had me feeling that I was there with Ryan Stone as all hell was breaking loose, and I believed that it was possible to survive, to keep living...to tell you a story. Open your eyes, your ears, your heart, and live.

Technically brilliant, beautiful, challenging, intelligent, and narratively complex, but perhaps not quite as emotionally satisfying as it hoped to be. Maybe just a little too big for itself, but I wish I was 30 years younger so I would have time to watch it a few more times in my life.

I love films like this. It's why I go to the movies; to be taken someplace else, to another time and another place, where I hope to see something that makes me think and feel about my life and my place in the world a little differently. Regardless of the few shortcomings which I'm sure other people have raged on about, if you enjoy looking for both the bigger picture and the smaller, more intimate moments in films, Cloud Atlas will certainly have you covered.