In a year when A-listers Will Smith, Matt Damon and Tom Cruise tried to rocket to the stars in big-budget science fiction movies, the actor who has achieved the most powerful liftoff is Sandra Bullock. Her film, “Gravity,” has been in sustained orbit as the top box office moneymaker for two weekends in a row.
Now topping $123 million in ticket sales, the Warner Bros. space thriller left Universal Studios’ Formula 1 racing pageant, “Rush,” stuck in traffic with about $22 million. And “Gravity” also stole the shimmer from the solid opening of Tom Hanks’ gritty Somali pirate escapade, “Captain Phillips,” by holding on to the No. 1 slot over the weekend.
In Smith’s “After Earth,” our planet has been long abandoned. The same goes for Cruise’s “Oblivion” -- sort of. In Damon’s “Elysium,” the problem is too many people crowding the place a century-or-so in the future.
But “Gravity” is set in the present day with the Earth we know in plain sight as two working astronauts face an emergency on the International Space Station.
