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Gravity is so harrowing, I'm tempted to call it crisis porn. The movie stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in orbit over Earth after debris destroys their spacecraft. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, A Little Princess) warns us from the get-go with some on-screen text that life in space is impossible, and then proceeds to throw everything you can imagine at Bullock and Clooney's characters. They've got dwindling oxygen supplies, they've got the debris looping back around at them every ninety minutes, their spacesuits are running out of propulsion, and their connection to Huston has gone dark. There are the threats of burning alive, freezing to death, drowning, and slipping into coma. They see other members of their crew frozen solid, flesh exposed to the vacuum of space -- one guy with a tidy hole clean through his head.

For a while, Gravity is a tense tale of survival — but the constant tragedy starts to feel too much like a rigged video game narrative. It becomes less of a compelling story and more like an amusement park ride. Not that there’s anything wrong with rides. In fact, the superlative use of 3D cinematography puts you right into the action. This may be the first movie I’ve ever seen that I would recommend only seeing in 3D — it’s a huge part of the experience (and I’m not a fan of 3D).

Unfortunately, the escalating crises aren’t the only excess in Gravity. The film starts off meditative and austere, but steadily morphs into something surprisingly maudlin. Bullock gives an amazing performance, possibly her best ever, but the script gives her a grating inner conflict that I could have done without (imagine shades of Titanic). I know characters are supposed to have inner and outer conflicts and experience some sort of transformation, but in this particular case, it’s too much. The will to survive should be enough in Gravity, and making Bullock’s character someone who needs to discover this will within herself left me cold. An amusement park ride, I can take. But a cheesy amusement park ride? And besides — NASA would never let a basket case into space. Oh, well.

Problems aside, it’s worth seeing Gravity in 3D, on a big screen, to experience the sensation of floating in space above Earth. No other movie has captured this in such a compelling way. You get to see the sun rise across the globe. You get to feel the terror of slipping into the Earth’s shadow. And you get to do it with two of Hollywood’s most likeable stars.

Academy Awards: Best Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Actress (Bullock), Production Design