Gravity is the best movie I've seen in a long time. I don't recommend that you wait for this to come out on DVD, because this is the sort of movie that should be seen on a big screen.
The movie opens to a beautiful shot of astronauts at work near the Hubbel telescope making some repairs. Disaster strikes as the area is showered with debris and the space shuttle is destroyed. What follows is some of the most convincing shots of people navigating in zero gravity I've seen yet, as well as some really breathtaking shots of objects spinning in space while terrified astronauts try to catch hold and survive.
Interestingly, Buzz Aldrin liked the movie but his one criticism was that the pictures of Earth were too clear. In reality more of the Earth would have been obscured with clouds or difficult to see. I think I can live with the unrealistic clarity.
The plot is actually very simple, though effective. The thing that makes the movie impressive is the way it puts you in the metaphorical shoes of two astronauts who watch their shuttle be destroyed, and their struggle to survive. Sandra Bullock does a good job portraying the stress that an inexperienced astronaut, or really almost anyone, would feel when their ride home explodes and they are sent hurtling through space.
The movie has been a major box office success. I have to confess that when I found this out, I thought the same thing that Neil DeGrasse Tyson evidently tweeted about later, after pointing out some of the scientific innacuracies which cropped up in the film.
Neil Tyson under hashtag- Mysteries of #Gravity: Why we enjoy a SciFi film set in make-believe space more than we enjoy actual people set in real space.
When you watch their ship explode, consider this: The space shuttle has been retired, and we have not replaced it. Clearly this story is set in the past, because it couldn't possibly happen today.
When Curiosity landed on Mars, the public was thrilled and engaged. Despite this, we have essentially refused to fund NASA to the point that their operations in space are very limited. In fact, with the sequester level spending that has been set at his time, scientific development across the board has been severely set back.
Increasingly, American scientists are thinking of leaving the country in order to be able to continue pursuing their projects. At this point, if the Republicans agree to fund our government at all, they propose to continue the sequestor for another year, which will mean another year that all these scientists are out of work. That is exactly what the current "Clean CR" being proposed means.
In the future, when you hear of attempts to exploit space commercially or travel to parts of the solar system we've never been, there's one thing you can count of. It won't be us. It might be Elon Musk, or China, or the EU. But we are no longer in the business of leading the world. We no longer even keep up.