What the critics are saying: ‘Gravity’

TORONTO – Gravity has exploded onto big screens — including IMAX — and curious movie-goers are expected to help it rocket to the top of the weekend box office.

The movie, from director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in space after a Russian satellite smashed into their shuttle.

Gravity left audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival breathless last month. So, is it as good as the buzz?

Here’s what some of the critics are saying:

Speaking of buzz, The Hollywood Reporter enlisted real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin to review Gravity.

The second man to step foot on the moon said he was “very, very impressed with it.”

“We were probably not as lighthearted as Clooney and Sandra Bullock,” Aldrin wrote. “We didn’t tell too many jokes when people were in some position of jeopardy outside the spacecraft, but I think that’s the humanity coming through in the characters.”

Jeff Marker of the Gainsville Times described Gravity as “one of the most suspenseful films released in years” and “a perfectly executed movie.”

Marker gushed about the “seamless” special effects and the “genuinely brilliant” performances of Clooney and Bullock.

“Gravity is a great science-fiction movie, a riveting survival story and a mind-blowing visual spectacle,” he wrote.

At the Toronto Star, critic Peter Howell said the movie is more than a cinematic spectacle.

“The film also connects on a purely emotional level, with Clooney and Bullock realistically depicting the plight of stranded astronauts facing dwindling oxygen and rescue prospects,” he wrote.

“Beyond sheer entertainment value — and there’s plenty of that — the film’s deeper meaning is profound appreciation of just how tiny we are in the vastness of the universe and how connected we are to the Earth’s embrace.”

Peter Travers at Rolling Stone said Bullock gives the “performance of a lifetime” and called Cuarón “a master of pure cinema.”

“With enthralling detail, it offers thrills, humor, dazzle, disaster, poetic vision and mythic reach,” he wrote.

Fox News reviewer Justin Craig was similarly blown away.

“It’s a true, new experience,” he wrote. “This mesmerizing, awe-inspiring and often frighteningly realistic exploration of space flight (we assume) harkens back to the birth of cinema when the mechanics of movie making were not widely understood by the audience and the images blew peoples’ minds.”

At USA Today, Claudia Puig opined that “Gravity is the kind of enthralling, all-encompassing, giddy cinematic experience that surfaces once in a blue moon.”

She added: “Director Alfonso Cuarón has crafted a bracing masterpiece that blends visual panache, top-notch acting, deft writing and taut pacing.”

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted his own review of Gravity on Friday.

“It’s a very fun ride, beautifully shot,” he wrote. “After seeing it, let me know if you’d rather fly in space w/ Sandra or George.”

WATCH: Global’s Eric Cohen reviews Gravity