EW Critical Mass: Sully movie reviews

There’s a wide variety of movies to check out this weekend. The biggest release is no doubt Tom Hanks playing the real-life US Airways pilot who successfully landed an Airbus on the Hudson River in Clint Eastwood’s Sully, which earned solid reviews after its debut at the Telluride Film Festival.

With so much to choose from, EW’s Critical Mass guide is here to help you make the right choice at the movies this weekend. Before you head to the theater, check out what the critics are saying about this week’s new wide releases in the reviews, below.

Sully

Opens Sept. 9.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

Still, the reason why the movie works at all is Hanks. I can’t imagine it airing anywhere but on Lifetime without him. On the page, Sullenberger is a pretty vanilla, one-dimensional character. A cipher with wings pinned to his chest. There’s nothing inherently cinematic about him. But Hanks, of course, brings a career’s worth of excellence, depth, good will, and trust-me assurance to the story that isn’t necessarily in Todd Komarnicki’s script. As in last year’s equally hagiographic Bridge of Spies, he doesn’t give a flashy performance or go big in the way most actors would. He knows there’s power in subtlety, in quiet, in the unspoken gesture—the words that aren’tspoken. He knows that less can often be more. Like Sully, he’s the kind of guy you want behind the controls. B

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 81%

Metacritic: 76

The Disappointments Room

Opens Sept. 9.

There simply aren’t enough scares to build tension throughout. Most of the film is just Beckinsale walking around looking worried. Occasionally, she’ll glimpse some ghostly little girl. Sometimes a door slams behind her. Almost never will you be scared.

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: N/A

Metacritic: N/A

Don’t Breathe

Now playing.

EW’s Christian Holub says:

Alvarez appears to have consciously toned down the gore from his blood-saturated Evil Dead remake, trusting unnerving visuals and foreshadowing what terrors are about to unfold. When the group first enter the house, the camera pans all the way around to show the hidden implements and traps they’re obliviously missing. But playing on this ambitious scale — trying to make a statement about modern society while meeting the demands of a modern thriller — costs the movie some consistency, and the stakes start to erode after a few too many narrow escapes. The result is thought-provoking but rather lacking in the second-by-second scares genre fans tend to expect.B+

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Metacritic: 71

Suicide Squad

Now playing.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

Writer-director David Ayer (End of Watch) skillfully sets up the film, introducing each of the crazies with caffeinated comic-book energy. But their mission — to take down Cara Delevingne’s undersketched witch, Enchantress, and her giant golem-like brother — is a bit of a bust. The stakes should feel higher. As someone who isn’t fluent in Suicide Squad lore, I can’t imagine there wasn’t a better villain in its back ­catalog. Still, it’s nothing compared with how wasted Leto’s scene-stealing Joker is. With his toxic-green hair, shiny metal teeth, and demented rictus grin, he’s the most dangerous live wire in the film. But he’s stranded in the periphery. For DC, which blew it with Batman v Superman last spring, Suicide Squad is a small step forward. But it could have been a giant leap.B–

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 26%

Metacritic: 40

Kubo and the Two Strings

Now playing.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

First-time director Travis Knight — he served as lead animator on Laika’s previous three films — has given Kubo a gorgeously tactile look full of lavish depth and detail, and an engaging cast of characters, including Matthew McConaughey’s strutting warrior Beetle and Ralph Fiennes’ tricky, terrifying Moon King. The bickering interplay between Beetle and Kubo’s monkey protector (Charlize Theron) brighten an often harrowing narrative, though the jokes can feel misplaced tonally, as if they were refugees from the script of one of those other, sunnier Secret Life of Dory types. (Also disconcerting is the dearth of actual Asian voices on either side of the screen in an ostensibly Asian story, aside from a few supporting vocal roles.) Those arguments aside, Kubo is still a marvel — a visually stunning, richly imagined oasis in a sea of candy-colored safety, and one of the first truly original movies of the year so far.A–

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Metacritic: 84

Pete’s Dragon

Opens Aug. 12.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

There isn’t a lot that’s unexpected here, like a few too-obvious characterizations (loggers = evil; environmentalists = saints). But it’s a simple story, heartwarmingly told. It doesn’t hurt that Robert Redford — as Howard’s eccentric father, who once spotted a dragon himself — triggers your tear ducts every time he shares a wise memory of childlike wonder, either. Is Pete’s Dragon shamelessly sentimental and manipulative? You bet. But it works so well that you won’t care a bit.B+

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 86%

Metacritic: 72

Sausage Party

Now playing.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

We’re here to watch a taco shell with lesbian tendencies talk like Salma Hayek (Ay mami, that’s her) or Edward Norton bringing his best Woody Allen-isms to a neurotic little ball of gluten named Sammy Bagel Jr., to laugh and cringe and gasp simultaneously when the movie pushes gleefully past every last boundary of good taste. Sex is paramount — prepare yourself, reader, for a climactic condiment-drenched orgy that late-night Cinemax wouldn’t touch — but race and religion are the sacred cows the movie seems happiest to grind: Jars of sauerkraut goose-step like it’s 1936 Berlin; the Middle Eastern aisle isn’t big enough to hold Sammy and his flatbread archenemy, Lavash (David Krumholtz). As outrageously un-PC as these scenes are, they’re far sharper than the aimless, scatological stoner humor that pads out so much of the script. That’s the movie’s real food for thought; the rest is just munchies.B

Read the full EW review.

Rotten Tomatoes: 82%

Metacritic: 6