Michael Sragow

Michael Sragow

Agrees with the Tomatometer 76% of the time.

Biography:
Michael Sragow saw the greatest movie ever made, The Wild Bunch, six times in two weeks in 1969 and has been arguing about it and other movies ever since. He has been a movie critic for The Baltimore Sun since 2001 and a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1989. Prior to writing for The Sun, he was a film critic for Rolling Stone and The San Francisco Examiner, among other publications. He is the author of Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Pantheon, 2008).
Publications:
Baltimore Sun , New Times , New Yorker , Orange County Register , Salon.com
Critics' Group:
National Society of Film Critics
Total Reviews:
783
Total QuickRatings:
1

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 51 - 100 of 783
Rating T-Meter Title | Year Review
C- 48% Earth to Echo (2014) " Spielberg's E.T., so ugly it was cute, was also full of personality. Echo is adorable and forgettable, and the rest of the characters are simply plot holders in a narrative contraption that generates jeopardy-raising obstacles to Echo going home. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
A+ 99% A Hard Day's Night (1964) " The whole movie is an ecstatic mix of serendipity and invention. The Beatles were ready for their cinematic breakthrough. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
A 97% Life Itself (2014) " What makes Life Itself such a wonderful documentary is that it weds Ebert's passion for the good things in life to his quest to find great movies. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
B 95% Gabrielle (2014) " Writer-director Louise Archambault uses a free and easy camera style and mosaic-like editing to suggest how intensely Gabrielle responds to elements of everyday life. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
D 24% Tammy (2014) " It's obnoxious when it means to be comic, and excruciating when it wants to be moving. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
A- 91% Venus in Fur (2014) " [The] rare filmed theater piece that leaves you smiling, thinking, and maybe a bit hot and bothered, to boot. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jul 7, 2014
A- 76% The Last Sentence (2014) " A master psychological filmmaker, Jan Troell, puts a towering anti-Nazi crusader under his microscope in the urgently compelling biopic The Last Sentence. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 19, 2014
D+ 23% Think Like a Man Too (2014) " When it comes to wisdom about marriage - well, as Henny Youngman might have said, "Take this movie. Please." " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 19, 2014
C- 53% Jersey Boys (2014) " The film's wooziness wouldn't be disastrous if it swept audiences up in the zest of pop creation. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 19, 2014
20% I Love Trouble (1994) " It's like the worst possible Newman-Redford vehicle: the script reduces the stars to twinkling mannequins, and their chemistry barely rises to the buddy-buddy level. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted Jun 17, 2014
A- 83% Dormant Beauty (2014) " The film pits their honest passion against the stylized desperation of the actress' religious theater and the decadent hollowness of Berlusconi's political theater. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 12, 2014
C 56% The Signal (2014) " The Signal doesn't bludgeon you in the manner of big-budget misfires like Transcendence -- it retains the appearance of freshness -- but it doesn't slake your thirst for story, either. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 12, 2014
C- 84% 22 Jump Street (2014) " 22 Jump Street may be the most arbitrary sequel since Bad Boys II. If it's not the worst, that's strictly because of Channing Tatum. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 12, 2014
A 92% How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) " A solid sequel sets its goals and meets them, but a movie as elating as How to Train Your Dragon 2 soars beyond conventional objectives and upends audience expectations. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 12, 2014
C+ 80% The Fault In Our Stars (2014) " Amid everything that's forced or ersatz about the movie, Woodley and Elgort are the real thing. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 5, 2014
B- 90% Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014) " What stays with you are Cruise's off-type performance, a few bravura sequences, and Blunt's molten presence. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 5, 2014
A- 93% The Case Against 8 (2014) " Filmmakers Cotner and White use fly-on-the-wall footage, fresh interviews and the reading of court transcripts to capture these intimate revelations, as well as the crackle of history in the making. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 5, 2014
B+ 88% Obvious Child (2014) " Maturity -- what a concept! That's the humorous, self-lacerating notion at the core of Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Jun 5, 2014
73% Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) " [A] clunky, fraudulent, yet apparently crowd-pleasing laugh-and-tear-jerker. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted Jun 2, 2014
A- 97% We Are the Best! (2014) " The movie is refreshingly sensitive to gender, but also transcends it. What unites the three clashing heroines is their resistance to conventional cliques and schoolhouse conformity. In more ways than one, they're a band of outsiders. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 30, 2014
B 85% Night Moves (2014) " Fanning is marvelous as a woman who's so bright and charming on the surface you can't tell whether she's floundering underneath. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 30, 2014
C 49% Maleficent (2014) " All would be forgiven if the film had more magical feeling. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 30, 2014
C 33% A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) " In A Million Ways to Die in the West, director-star Seth MacFarlane builds an imposing, affectionate reconstruction of the American movie West, then defaces it with funny mustaches -- often literally. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 30, 2014
25% Pearl Harbor (2001) " Those who should be offended are American veterans. Their service has been reduced to a sentimental fable of two heroic pilots and their noble lass proving their gumption and their bravery. Even as a tall tale, it's puny. " ‐ Baltimore Sun
Posted May 27, 2014
C 14% Blended (2014) " Comedians often draw on childhood influences, and Adam Sandler and his team do it in the worst possible way in Blended.. [which] is like a Bizarro version of The Brady Bunch. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 23, 2014
A- 42% Words And Pictures (2014) " Each combination of word and picture conjures something even stronger, as happens in memorable movies like Words and Pictures -- and with passionate couples like Marcus and Delsanto, who demonstrate the incandescent power of love and art. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 22, 2014
B+ 85% Cold in July (2014) " The best thing about Jim Mickle's movie is that it retains the down-home-gone-wrong feeling of Lansdale's book. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 22, 2014
A+ 92% X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) " The most exciting big-studio release so far this year is X-Men: Days of Future Past. It tops even Captain America: The Winter Soldier, another bold Marvel superhero film, for ambition, emotion and thrills. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 22, 2014
6% Mobsters (1991) " It's an excuse for the latest crop of media-spawned personalities -- the male equivalent of starlets -- to invade the heavy-duty genre of the gangster film. They don't come up to Cagney's spats. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 20, 2014
4/5 87% The Immigrant (2014) " I can't think of another actor today who could vitalize the character of a virtuous, wronged woman as vividly and unsentimentally as Marion Cotillard does in The Immigrant. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 15, 2014
A 92% The Retrieval (2014) " The Retrieval's potency transcends its scope. It shows you, in microcosm, the sacrifices that forge the conscience not only of a boy, but of a nation. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 15, 2014
C- 73% Godzilla (2014) " Director Gareth Edwards bloats the film with human figures that never spring to life and sabotage the primal story. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 15, 2014
C+ 61% Million Dollar Arm (2014) " Hamm doesn't embarrass himself as Bernstein, but the role is hollow -- a savvy guy who needs to learn how nice and lovable he can be. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 15, 2014
46% The Babe (1992) " Goodman should have been perfect for the title role: like Ruth, he's a regular Joe of hugely irregular proportions in appetite and accomplishment. Too bad Hiller and Fusco cut him down to size. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 9, 2014
B+ 81% Fed Up (2014) " Stephanie Soechtig's attack on Big Food for sweetening us to death goes down like a tart, stiff drink. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 8, 2014
B+ 72% Palo Alto (2014) " Franco's stories, sometimes coarse and flimsy on the page, operate like launch pads for a slew of fresh, frisky performers. But the delicacy of the movie's narrative and its almost mystical thread of yearning come from Coppola. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 8, 2014
B- 88% Chef (2014) " As a director, Favreau keeps his music and his palette bold; the grass-roots American food and road views look inviting. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 8, 2014
C+ 35% God's Pocket (2014) " God's Pocket, despite its tiptop cast, fails to sustain its comedy or drama. It becomes, at best, a piece of sardonic anthropology. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 8, 2014
C- 73% Neighbors (2014) " A movie about the unexamined and excruciating phenomenon of "neighbor noise" turns out to be mostly about party envy (and, yes, the other kind of envy, too). " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 8, 2014
46% For Love of the Game (1999) " For Love of the Game asks whether the same qualities that make an athlete a champion don't also destroy his happiness. The answer, unfortunately, is long-winded and redundant... But some of the baseball scenes are good. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 8, 2014
57% The Sandlot (1993) " There's a snappy change-of-pace gag involving a little guy and a nubile lifeguard, but the screams and barks and fraudulent emotions grow wearying. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 7, 2014
23% A Stranger Among Us (1992) " Griffith's artless embodiment of the script's deranged idea of tough-gal gumption isn't as amusing as it should be. She's a B-picture heroine stuck in an absurdly self-conscious prestige project. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 3, 2014
10% Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) " Steven E. de Souza's script has Foley following a trail of murder and deception into an L. A. amusement park called WonderWorld. The director, John Landis, fails to exploit the possibilities. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted May 2, 2014
C+ 53% The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) " The new Spider-Man series has managed to do in two films what the previous Spider-Man series did in three: transform an engrossing comic-book coming-of-age epic into an overstuffed and off-putting battle royale. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 1, 2014
A 95% Ida (2014) " The performances are beyond reproach. As Wanda, Agata Kulesza is mournfully magnetic. As Ida, Agata Trzebuchowska expresses a complex consciousness budding up from behind her sweet blank slate. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 1, 2014
B+ 75% Bicycling with Moliere (2014) " As long as it's putting Moliere through a Pirandellian prism, Bicycling With Moliere is sophisticated fun. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 1, 2014
C 83% Belle (2014) " Director Amma Assante and screenwriter Misan Sagay weigh down everything by introducing portentous melodrama and brittle social dramedy. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted May 1, 2014
81% A Few Good Men (1992) " The whole film, with its steady, important-picture pacing, its foursquare visual style, and its pseudo-profundity, is a piece of glorified banality. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted Apr 30, 2014
84% My Cousin Vinny (2001) " Marisa Tomei, as Vinny's fiancée, imbues the most obligatory reactions with either a startling ferocity or a farcical ambiguity worthy of her character's name: Mona Lisa Vito. " ‐ New Yorker
Posted Apr 30, 2014
C+ 89% Locke (2014) " As a visual tour-de-force, Locke is workmanlike and mechanical. As a piece of drama it amounts to watching an easy-to-read character check off the boxes on an existential to-do list. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Apr 24, 2014
A- 96% Blue Ruin (2014) " A gory instant-classic cult film about a maladroit revenge killer. " ‐ Orange County Register
Posted Apr 24, 2014
Showing 51 - 100 of 783
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/michael-sragow/?cats=&genreid=&letter=&switches=&sortby=&limit=50&page=2
www.rottentomatoes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-42
245133
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:W722LZOCMB3NNN6ZYAWAGFJBULXSOG74
<urn:uuid:27e76ed8-364d-47a6-9939-2518b7537ac9>
2014-10-21T10:50:21Z
209.237.233.38
sha1:YU2BODF7XKXAVUUMLVYZFXGJV5H6WH5A
<urn:uuid:727fe907-cda1-4346-b480-f5a1157d4e69>
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/michael-sragow/?cats=&genreid=&letter=&switches=&sortby=&limit=50&page=2
response
<urn:uuid:49fa65b8-0abe-43bd-9a0c-1a6cad5eda5e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-42
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for October 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf