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"Marking Alfonso Cuaron&amp;#039;s much-anticipated return to the big screen following a seven-year absence, his sci-fi thriller Gravity holds its world premiere tonight at the Venice Film Festival.  Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star as a pair of astronauts who are left stranded in space after their shuttle is hit by debris during a routine mission.  The first reviews are in, and the early buzz is effusive, with critics praising Cuaron&amp;#039;s command of the outer space setting and Bullock&amp;#039;s haunted lead performance.   Digital Spy rounds up the major critical opinion so far below. Justin Chang - Variety &amp;quot;Suspending viewers alongside Bullock for a taut, transporting 91 minutes (with George Clooney in a sly supporting turn), the director&amp;#039;s long-overdue follow-up to Children of Men is at once a nervy experiment in blockbuster minimalism and a film of robust movie-movie thrills, restoring a sense of wonder, terror and possibility to the big screen that should inspire awe among critics and audiences worldwide.&amp;quot; Todd McCarthy - The Hollywood Reporter &amp;quot;At once the most realistic and beautifully choreographed film ever set in space, Gravity is a thrillingly realised survival story spiked with interludes of breath-catching tension and startling surprise. Not at all a science fiction film in the conventional sense, Alfonso Cuaron&amp;#039;s first feature in seven years has no aliens, space ship battles or dystopian societies, just the intimate spectacle of a man and a woman trying to cope in the most hostile possible environment across a very tight 90 minutes.&amp;quot; Mark Adams - Screen Daily &amp;quot;A genuinely tense and exciting lost-in-space thriller, Alfonso Cuaron&amp;#039;s exhilarating and often spectacular 3-D film is a real pleasure, driven by top-notch lead performance from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as well as some seriously cool special effects.&amp;quot; Derek Malcolm - Evening Standard &amp;quot;The film&amp;#039;s raison d&amp;#039;etre is its considerable technical prowess, enhanced by 3D but in a determinedly ungimmicky way. Here the work of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is first class, so what you see is spectacular even if what you hear is less so. Will the film succeed with the public after all its travails in the making? Perhaps, but this is a lean plot with only two characters, and it never grips quite as well as it might once you get used to the grim silence of outer space.&amp;quot;  Oliver Lyttleton - The Playlist &amp;quot;Gravity is very much an action adventure, one very occasionally more meditative than most, but it&amp;#039;s unashamed of its desire to thrill you. And thrill you it certainly does: it&amp;#039;s visceral, knuckle-chewingly tense stuff, Cuaron and his co-writer and son Jonas expertly packing obstacle packed on top of obstacle in the way of the astronauts&amp;#039; return home, without losing touch of humanity or humor.&amp;quot; David Jenkins - Little White Lies &amp;quot;Stylistically, Gravity takes Cuar\u00C3\u00B3n&amp;#039;s&amp;#039;s creative partnership with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to its breathtaking natural conclusion. The visual schema of the film is clearly inspired by the minutely orchestrated (and occasionally controversial) sequence shots that featured in his 2006 film, Children of Men. And while in that film the mastery of technique threatened to choke the human drama and come across as needless showboating, the zero gravity setting makes the casual employment of these sinuous and innovative long takes far more dramatically coherent while fusing much more tightly with the essentials of the story.&amp;quot; Gravity is released in the US on October 4, and in the UK on November 8.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a510483/alfonso-cuarons-gravity-debuts-at-venice-what-the-critics-say/>