Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be endlessly fascinating.
I’m a big fan of the Rocky film series. The first one is nearly perfect, the next three are all good fun (the less said about the 5th one, the better) and I absolutely love Rocky Balboa, the 6th film in the series which was released in 2006 and featured an aged Rocky returning to the ring to face a young champion based on an ESPN computer simulation. I also happen to like Raging Bull, the Jake LaMotta biopic by Scorsese which featured a tour de force performance by Robert De Niro. However, I had no desire to see the two films combine into the travesty of a trailer that I was presented with at the theater this weekend. Take a look and read on for my comments:
Gravity, despite pulling aspects from a variety of familiar film styles, is a movie that feels unique, which is something with great appeal to me these days. It has much in common with Open Water, the 2003 film about a couple who are left behind while scuba diving, but it also borrows heavily from a variety of disaster movies where people are trapped or stranded and have to improvise a way to survive. And of course, it has a lot in common with Apollo 13, including the use of Ed Harris as the voice of mission control. (It even blatantly steals and idea from WALL-E and contains obvious references to Star Wars and Alien.) But its tone is drastically different from all of those films. Where those movies have a frantic aspect to them, with every moment devoted to the heroes solving the next problem or overcoming the next obstacle, Gravity has a peacefulness to it that sets it apart. And while there are moments of terror and suspense, the calm peaceful moments are what will stick with you after you’ve left the theater. 
