Michael Sragow Movie Reviews & Previews

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Michael Sragow

Agrees with the Tomatometer 75% 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:: 460
Total QuickRatings:: 1

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Showing 1 - 50 of 460

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
B+	71%	Wish You Were Here (2013)	" Joel Edgerton gives one of the year's strongest performances." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
B-	73%	The Kings of Summer (2013)	" This willfully eccentric tale about teenage boys in suburban Ohio fleeing their families to live in the deep woods plays like an erratic comic revue slapped together at theater camp." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
B-	34%	The Internship (2013)	" Like many an intern, this sweet, negligible comedy, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as Google's oldest interns, doesn't live up to its potential." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
C	38%	The Purge (2013)	" Writer-director James DeMonaco's The Purge fritters away its promise in lurid, frenzied violence." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
B+	85%	This Is the End (2013)	" The filmmaking itself is disarmingly amusing, hitting grace notes amid the grandiosity." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
A	84%	Much Ado About Nothing (2013)	" Rarely has wisdom been more joyous than in this supple contemporary version of William Shakespeare's seminal comedy." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
A	91%	We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks (2013)	" A psychological suspense film with an open ending that's more haunting than the tricky climaxes of most post-Hitchcock thrillers." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
C-	56%	Man of Steel (2013)	" The mechanical storytelling swamps a first-rate cast." — Orange County Register Posted Jun 13, 2013
	12%	Sliver (1993)	" Sharon Stone goes cold in this botched thiller-maybe from the effort of pretending that her character, a beauteous book editor, would fall for the preening young computer wizard played by the vacant-and-proud-of-it William Baldwin." — New Yorker Posted Jun 12, 2013
1/4	6%	Gigli (2003)	" Excruciating." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 5, 2013
B	87%	Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)	" J.J. Abrams' second Star Trek movie is chock-full of goodies, but by the last quarter the action is so inflated and relentless that it's like an anvil chorus played on your head." — Orange County Register Posted May 15, 2013
C	50%	The Great Gatsby (2013)	" Baz Luhrmann's razzmatazz and bombast -- in 3D! -- overwhelm the subtle poetry of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel." — Orange County Register Posted May 9, 2013
	97%	Groundhog Day (1993)	" Even if you applaud Bill Murray's evolution from inspired comedian to minimalist seriocomic actor, it's a relief to revisit his most varied and charming role as Phil Connors." — New Yorker Posted May 6, 2013
	98%	One False Move (1992)	" Skillfully performed and welcomely unpredictable, this low-budget crime film, made by actor turned director Carl Franklin, starts out as a herky-jerky exploitation piece, then turns into something better." — New Yorker Posted May 6, 2013
C+	78%	Iron Man 3 (2013)	" It would be just a special-effects-and-hardware extravaganza, with a dead-end script full of wrong turns, were it not for Robert Downey Jr. and a game and witty cast." — Orange County Register Posted May 2, 2013
C	45%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" A movie that tries to turn a torture chamber into a comedy club." — Orange County Register Posted Apr 25, 2013
	100%	The Buddy Holly Story (1978)	" The facts in this pop biography are often hopelessly askew, but the story is carried by the unadulterated power of Gary Busey's original and insightful performance." — New Yorker Posted Apr 22, 2013
	77%	The Mask (1994)	" The gangland plot is flimsy (bad guy Peter Greene wears too much eyeliner), and the jokes are erratic, but it's a far better showcase for Carrey's comic-from-Uranus talent than Ace Ventura." — New Yorker Posted Apr 12, 2013
3/4	92%	Ghost World (2001)	" The modest yet redeeming triumph of Ghost World is the offhand way it brings to the screen a streak of American dark humor that is dour, resilient and unexpectedly infectious." — Baltimore Sun Posted Apr 12, 2013
	78%	Addams Family Values (1993)	" You've got to respect a comedy that makes light of arson, torture, and murder in these squeamish times." — New Yorker Posted Apr 11, 2013
	83%	Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) (Warriors of the Wind) (1984)	" When mammoth dandelions puff out spores, the sight is as seductive as it is lethal." — New Yorker Posted Apr 1, 2013
A-	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" Delirious surprises crowd out the clichés in this thoroughly disarming movie." — Orange County Register Posted Mar 28, 2013
C+	65%	Starbuck (2013)	" [Starbuck] would be more likable if it were less ingratiating. It didn't have to be so quick to excuse the hero's general, genial incompetence just because he's so doggone lovable and has such studly sperm." — Orange County Register Posted Mar 28, 2013
B-	76%	Renoir (2013)	" A voluptuous, under-dramatized account of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's heroic final phase." — Orange County Register Posted Mar 28, 2013
A-	81%	From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)	" From Up On Poppy Hill is at once old-fashioned and innovative, an exquisite evocation of Yokohama in 1963 that dares to treat teenagers with both gravity and grace." — Orange County Register Posted Mar 28, 2013
C-	28%	G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)	" Movies like GI Joe: Retaliation want to give you the video-game equivalent of an itchy trigger-finger. It's an emotion-free zone." — Orange County Register Posted Mar 28, 2013
	97%	The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000)	" Aviva Kempner's documentary celebration of the Detroit Tigers first baseman defines one of those instances-- rarer than sportswriters admit -- in which a champion athlete becomes a genuine, all-around hero." — New Yorker Posted Mar 19, 2013
	77%	A League of Their Own (1992)	" This movie aims for the tear ducts and the funny bone as ruthlessly as the big action-fantasy hits go after the viscera." — New Yorker Posted Mar 19, 2013
	67%	Cobb (1994)	" Cobb cuts right through the winner-take-all ethos of American athletics. It's a raw, inspired, audaciously funny, and unexpectedly moving collaboration between the writer-director Ron Shelton and Tommy Lee Jones." — New Yorker Posted Mar 19, 2013
	92%	Charulata (1964)	" Ray recognizes the paradox that reformers are insulated from the people for whom they toil, but the movie is too stately and attenuated." — New Yorker Posted Mar 18, 2013
	50%	Rhapsody in August (1991)	" These days, people are more interested in Kurosawa than he is in being Kurosawa." — New Yorker Posted Mar 4, 2013
	97%	Unforgiven (1992)	" This is the finest set of performances ever to grace a Clint Eastwood movie, and this time Eastwood even does a good job directing Eastwood. Every bullet in this movie matters." — New Yorker Posted Feb 20, 2013
	——	The Brothers Rico (2010)	" A primitive, absorbing, meat-and-potatoes-make that spaghetti-and-meatballs-gangster movie from 1957." — New Yorker Posted Jan 7, 2013
	——	The Mollycoddle (1920)	" Fleming's direction has a ticklish, offhand inventiveness, with surprising deadpan editing ..." — New Yorker Posted Dec 31, 2012
4/4	95%	Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)	" Monty Python and the Holy Grail may be 26 years old, but even in the fast-moving world of pop culture, it's no relic. It's still the Holy Grail of crazy comedy." — Baltimore Sun Posted Nov 26, 2012
	100%	Secret Agent (1936)	" One of the weirdest movies Alfred Hitchcock ever made." — New Yorker Posted Sep 17, 2012
	78%	Mr. Majestyk (1974)	" Majestyk is a multidimensional hero. He's socially conscious yet individualistic, half-smart and semi-tough, human enough to make mistakes and man enough to correct them." — New Yorker Posted Sep 3, 2012
	94%	It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)	" Hamer's artful and iconoclastic film mixes a day in the life of a working-class family with a startling prison-break melodrama." — New Yorker Posted Mar 26, 2012
	100%	Rear Window (1954)	" It's one of Alfred Hitchcock's inspired audience-participation films: watching it, you feel titillated, horrified, and, ultimately, purged." — New Yorker Posted Mar 5, 2012
	89%	The Pruitt-igoe Myth: An Urban History (2012)	" An engulfing real-life horror story as well as a testimony to the dominance of the image in American public discourse." — New Yorker Posted Jan 16, 2012
	68%	Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)	" This uninhibited and uproarious monster bash, directed by Joe Dante, is more quick-witted and ironic than the original; it sets forth a savvy, slaphappy agenda before the opening credits and follows it straight through to the end, and even beyond." — New Yorker Posted Nov 7, 2011
	——	Goldstein (2006)	" This is the rare experimental film that's visually alive, spiritually welcoming, and funny even when it's brooding." — New Yorker Posted Oct 17, 2011
	34%	The Weight of Water (2001)	" The boating scenes have a languid yet charged sexuality, and the performances remain vibrant and rock-solid to the end." — New Yorker Posted May 30, 2011
	93%	Creature Comforts (1989)	" Primordially funny: this is one of the few cartoons that get adults to laugh as helplessly as kids." — New Yorker Posted Dec 27, 2010
	45%	Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1993)	" [Carrey's] comic language is made up of accent marks, not characters; instead of inhabiting a scene, he swallows it up and spits it out in manic doodles." — New Yorker Posted Nov 8, 2010
	99%	The Wizard of Oz (1939)	" One reason I've loved The Wizard of Oz from boyhood is the way it invites everyone to participate in its make-believe. You surrender your disbelief gleefully because the film is so witty and enjoyable." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 7, 2010
3.5/4	82%	Mademoiselle Chambon (2010)	" In Mademoiselle Chambon, only the scale is modest. The emotional stakes are sky-high." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 6, 2010
	52%	Knight & Day (2010)	" I must ask: are we supposed to get off on the utter absurdity of today's big action set pieces? When was the last time an action comedy made you commit to the characters?" — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 22, 2010
—	94%	Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)	— Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 12, 2010

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