Dave was mad-keen to see this at the IMAX at Darling Harbour, and it was my first visit to such. We got some dumplings from Sydney Noodle King beforehand, and a pricey coffee at the Belgian chocolatier on the way.
Clooney does his usual alpha-male good-old-boy schtick, and Bullock drifts towards cliched histrionics. It's a homage to heaps of earlier sci fi flicks: Barbarella (woman gets undressed in space), 2001 (the space child, umbilical cords), Marvin the Martian, probably Apollo 13 (unseen by me) and so forth. Of course it is visually very impressive and was probably worth the $31 tickets. I found the plot pedestrian, with a standard string of emergencies and near misses, and the emotional stuff quite manipulative. For all that it was very immersive.
Apparently this bloke also directed Children of Men, which I remember being a bit meh. I think Dana Stevens is about on the money: the opening sequence is awesome.