TJR review
This is a riveting true story that details how a real hero (played by Tom Hanks with “Right Stuff” cool saved an airplane full of people in what’s known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” The movie is classic Eastwood: linear plot, no embellishment, great story. Valeta and I gave it 80, the critics 74, and users 76. There is no controversy, but the bad scores at the bottom of the critics list always expose a McWeeny.
Only two of our top-10 reviewers reviewed “Sully.”
James Berardinelli 75/100 Our No. 1 reviewer (+25) on his own Reelviews site
“Sully proves to be by turns engaging, exhilarating, and nail-biting.”
Roger Moore 75/100 Top-5 reviewer (+10) on Movie Nation / McClatchey
“Sully might not rank among Eastwood’s greatest films, but it shows his canny skill at deciding how to tell a story in which everybody knows the ending. That he manages to make it suspenseful and downright moving shows him at his professional best.”
Bad reviewers, in this case a full 10 of them, liked “Sully,” but turkeys still show up at the bottom of the list.
Dominick Suzanne-Mayer 58/100 No-name at Consequence of Sound, did not get -1 on his record because his score was only 22 points below ours
“The more affecting moments in Sully come when the film puts aside its posturing and really examines what it is to be heroic in a cynical age.” [As pontificated by a millennial with an M.A. in Film Studies from DePaul University].
Amy Nicholson 50/100 Bad reviewer (-12) at Village Voice (-60), here moonlighting for MTV
“Tom Hanks is so quietly compelling that he gives the film an illusion of depth.”
Drew McWeeny 50/100 Poor reviewer (-7) at no-name site HitFix (-9), in his effort to qualify for the “DO THE OPPOSITE” reviewer club
“There are no real stakes, and I find the attempts at creating suspense to be almost offensive. Irritating, at the very least.” [We have an irritated McWeeny here. Would you trust your next Saturday afternoon to a review of his?]