Michael Sragow Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Michael Sragow

Michael Sragow

Agrees with the Tomatometer 74% 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:: 466
Total QuickRatings:: 1

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Showing 51 - 100 of 466

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3/4	58%	The Invention of Lying (2009)	" The cascade of ideas proves to be both pleasurable and frustrating. As the movie retreats into a happy-ever-after ending, even its outrageous lies seem more like little white ones." — Baltimore Sun Posted Oct 2, 2009
3/4	75%	Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)	" Moore has always stood proudly for progressivism, and that works in his favor now." — Baltimore Sun Posted Oct 2, 2009
3.5/4	85%	Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex) (2008)	" An exciting, infuriating, combative experience." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 25, 2009
3.5/4	83%	Bright Star (2009)	" It's immediately refreshing in its unabashed flow of feeling, but it also wields a cumulative punch." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 25, 2009
0/4	25%	Fame (2009)	" Fame has today's usual gritty form of slick to it, but in every other way it's an Amateur Hour and a half." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 24, 2009
3/4	78%	The Informant! (2009)	" The Informant! is an entertaining expose of corporate corruption as well as a droll sendup of business-intrigue movies." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
2/4	42%	Jennifer's Body (2009)	" The one perfect aspect of Jennifer's Body is its title: No one is going to like this movie for its brain." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
1/4	17%	Love Happens (2009)	" Love Happens is an inorganic soap opera: It leaves you with a sudsy residue." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
3.5/4	71%	Tetro (2009)	" Tetro is a delirious surprise -- an experimental film from Francis Ford Coppola that has the sizzle and vim of his great narrative work." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
3/4	100%	Afghan Star (2009)	" The film's essential fascination and integrity swamp any qualms about its pacing or all-around moviemaking." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
2/4	61%	Adoration (2008)	" The movie's fractured structure and contrived subplots obscure a potentially affecting story and do nothing to advance the debate on any of its incendiary issues." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 18, 2009
3.5/4	——	Chops (2007)	" Anyone who wonders why jazz and the movies are often called the quintessential American arts should check out Bruce Broder's exhilarating documentary about high school jazz bands." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 11, 2009
4/4	80%	It Might Get Loud (2009)	" You'll never see a more tactile expression of the intimacy between artists and their instruments than in Davis Guggenheim's elating It Might Get Loud." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 11, 2009
3/4	57%	9 (2009)	" 9 is not a perfect 10, but its imperfection is what makes it gripping and bewitching." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 8, 2009
3.5/4	74%	Cold Souls (2009)	" The writer-director, Sophie Barthes, stays true to fairy-tale and literary notions of souls while surrounding them with sleek sci-fi paraphernalia." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 4, 2009
3/4	63%	Extract (2009)	" Extract is an exuberant original." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 4, 2009
3/4	68%	My One and Only (2009)	" It's affable entertainment -- a road movie with a smart map and characters who are unpredictable human beings, not just billboard attractions." — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 4, 2009
1/4	6%	All About Steve (2009)	" When you learn that Sandra Bullock produced as well as stars in All About Steve, you can't help wondering, "What was she thinking?"" — Baltimore Sun Posted Sep 4, 2009
1.5/4	88%	Inglourious Basterds (2009)	" It's so hollow and protracted that it transforms mayhem into monotony." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 20, 2009
2/4	91%	District 9 (2009)	" It's a bad joke that District 9 will be hailed for its "originality." The movie's main fun comes from wondering what coin of the pop realm Blomkamp will pluck out from his memory bank next." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 13, 2009
4/4	92%	Ponyo (2009)	" Fable, emotion and psychology merge in a fairy-tale brew that will hold children rapt and engage the better angels of adults." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 13, 2009
2/4	37%	The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)	" It might be a solid hook if we thought their love was grand. Instead, it's kind of creepy." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 13, 2009
3/4	75%	Julie & Julia (2009)	" Ephron, like her heroines, has finally found what suits her: a surprising comic and romantic realism." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 7, 2009
3/4	81%	Okuribito (Departures) (2009)	" The ending, which involves a rock, would wring tears from a stone." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 7, 2009
2/4	24%	Little Ashes (2009)	" The movie commits the error of scanting their cultural importance and fixating on Lorca's semi-requited love for Dali." — Baltimore Sun Posted Aug 7, 2009
4/4	97%	The Hurt Locker (2009)	" This film pioneers observational action moviemaking. It sensitizes you to changes in atmosphere that portend danger and convey hidden meaning while furthering the plot and the characters." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 31, 2009
3/4	87%	500 Days of Summer (2009)	" The film contorts its characters to prove that true love with Mr. or Ms. Right awaits every man or woman patient enough to stumble into it." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 31, 2009
4/4	89%	Séraphine (2009)	" The euphoria, lunacy and transformative intensity of art receive passionate, perhaps immortal treatment in Seraphine, Martin Provost's quietly magical and urgently moving film." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 31, 2009
3.5/4	79%	Humpday (2009)	" A pleasurable clash goes on in your head between your belief in the moment-to-moment sincerity of these two guys and your disbelief that they could ever go through with their plan." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 31, 2009
2.5/4	68%	Funny People (2009)	" Funny People is like Terms of Endearment done in a milieu where the most endearing compliment anyone can give refers to penis size." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 31, 2009
3.5/4	84%	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)	" Director Yates and screenwriter Kloves introduce this entry in the saga with splendid storytelling strokes." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 13, 2009
3/4	84%	Under Our Skin (2008)	" This compelling account of the explosive growth of Lyme disease grows to encompass all the peculiar politics, corruption and inertia of American medicine." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 10, 2009
2.5/4	90%	Moon (2009)	" All this wouldn't matter if Sam Rockwell didn't anchor this cleverly claustrophobic spectacle." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 10, 2009
1.5/4	67%	Brüno (2009)	" For a portrait of a monomaniac, it's alarmingly random. For an expose of charlatans who range from a psychic to celebrity-charity consultants, it's maddeningly shoddy." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 9, 2009
2/4	14%	I Love You Beth Cooper (2009)	" The slapstick mucilage doesn't bind with the film's increasingly straightforward dramedy about Denis' epiphany that his dream girl is human." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 9, 2009
4/4	96%	Food, Inc. (2009)	" A scary movie that's also funny, touching and good for you -- that's Robert Kenner's documentary about the American food industry, Food, Inc." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 3, 2009
1/4	50%	Whatever Works (2009)	" Whatever Works makes more of a demand on a viewer's willingness to suspend disbelief than movies about vampires or giant robots." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jul 3, 2009
3.5/4	68%	Public Enemies (2009)	" Depp operates like a star in more ways than one: He holds everyone in place with his gravitational pull." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 30, 2009
2/4	45%	Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Ice Age 3) (2009)	" The relentlessly gimmicky use of 3-D in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs helps reduce what could have been a genial piece of slapstick into a cartoon that's not just in-your-face, but in-your-eyeballs." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 30, 2009
2/4	48%	My Sister's Keeper (2009)	" It's beautifully shot and skillfully acted, but My Sister's Keeper, an earnest family-faces-cancer drama, is a bit like a real-world horror film with 'heart,' right down to the trick ending." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 25, 2009
1/4	20%	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)	" It's so loud and relentless you feel you're in the center of a trash compactor." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 23, 2009
2/4	52%	Easy Virtue (2009)	" In 1988, Sheridan Morley noted that Easy Virtue "remains of interest chiefly as Noel's elegant, laconic tribute to a lost world of drawing-room dramas." This gleefully inelegant movie tosses even that mild interest away." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 19, 2009
1/4	43%	The Proposal (2009)	" It's been made according to the chapter in the box-office manual labeled "summer counter-programming."" — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 18, 2009
2.5/4	14%	Year One (2009)	" If Harold Ramis' Year One were a bowling match, it would lurch between gutter balls and spares, with some scattered lucky strikes." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 18, 2009
3.5/4	95%	Goodbye Solo (2009)	" It's intelligent and emotional, not studied or sappy." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 12, 2009
3/4	92%	Etz Limon (Lemon Tree) (2009)	" The sensuousness of Lemon Tree is its glory." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 12, 2009
2/4	51%	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)	" The new players can't generate the grimy elan of the old film." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 12, 2009
3/4	93%	Aanrijding in Moscou (Moscow, Belgium) (2008)	" Barbara Sarafian provides a full-bodied portrait of mature female strength as a mother named Matty in Moscow, Belgium." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 12, 2009
3/4	40%	Imagine That (2009)	" In the end, Imagine That might not be anything more than superior family fare. But it's as difficult to make a commercial film with honest feeling as it is to create a pop anthem." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 12, 2009
1.5/4	79%	The Hangover (2009)	" Surrender your soul to its foul mesh of cheap cleverness and vulgarity. and you howl like a delighted demon. Resist, and you feel all sense and sensibility being crushed in its cogs." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 5, 2009
2.5/4	26%	Land of the Lost (2009)	" A spin-off of the '70s TV kids' show of the same name, it's far from a good movie, but it's also more enjoyable than this season's heavier or more pretentious misfires." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 5, 2009
2/4	64%	The Girlfriend Experience (2009)	" The awkward, improvised language, flat acting, self-conscious filmmaking and thin characterization sabotage the movie." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 5, 2009
1.5/4	9%	My Life in Ruins (2009)	" [A] measly little picture." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jun 5, 2009
3/4	92%	Drag Me to Hell (2009)	" Drag Me To Hell is quick and lowdown-delightful. It's also a graveyard or two up in class from the torture films that, in recent years, have redefined horror for the worse." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 28, 2009
4/4	98%	Up (2009)	" Everything about Up is an up, in the most visceral and poetic ways." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 28, 2009
2.5/4	62%	Faubourg 36 (Paris 36) (2009)	" Elegant, reality-tinged silliness." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 22, 2009
3/4	98%	Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009)	" The tragicomedy of artistic striving has never been more grittily or more sweetly captured than in Anvil! The Story of Anvil." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 22, 2009
2/4	33%	Terminator Salvation (2009)	" The humanity in this film is like something you get out of a package of ramen. It's full of freeze-dried speeches that basically say if humans make war like the machines, then the machines have won." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 20, 2009
3.5/4	93%	Sugar (2008)	" It resists cliche at every turn and puts something solid in its place: raw yet controlled observation that gives the film the form of a flexing muscle." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 15, 2009
4/4	84%	Tyson (2009)	" Tyson is a staggering movie." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 15, 2009
2/4	37%	Angels & Demons (2009)	" In Angels & Demons, the filmmakers expend a lot of time, craft and energy just to keep a potboiler at low-to-medium boil." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 15, 2009
3/4	95%	Star Trek (2009)	" The new Star Trek arouses an instant affection that sometimes rises to ecstasy and never entirely wears out." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 7, 2009
	26%	The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)	" It's misbegotten from the get-go: It boasts the nadir of "high concepts."" — Baltimore Sun Posted May 1, 2009
2.5/4	38%	X-Men Origins - Wolverine (2009)	" It's like an improbable six-stage rocket that keeps firing according to plan but never achieves lift-off." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 1, 2009
4/4	91%	Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (Everlasting Moments) (Maria Larsson's Everlasting Moment) (2009)	" Everlasting Moments is a masterpiece with a texture and feeling unlike any other movie. The film imbues its harried, haunted characters with a down-home majesty." — Baltimore Sun Posted May 1, 2009
4/4	91%	Gomorrah (Gomorra) (2008)	— Baltimore Sun Posted May 1, 2009
3/4	76%	Un Baiser s'il vous plaît (Shall We Kiss?) (2009)	" A sensational date movie." — Baltimore Sun Posted Apr 10, 2009
1/4	51%	Observe and Report (2009)	" A static one-ring circus revolving around a ringmaster who's also a low clown." — Baltimore Sun Posted Apr 10, 2009
3.5/4	88%	Adventureland (2009)	" The movie doesn't bog down in despair. Mottola has quickness, savvy and flair; he never lets you forget there's an amusement park to run." — Baltimore Sun Posted Apr 3, 2009
2.5/4	27%	Fast & Furious (2009)	" The director, Justin Lin, brings the same pinpoint reflexes to the action as he did in Tokyo Drift." — Baltimore Sun Posted Apr 3, 2009
3/4	72%	Sunshine Cleaning (2009)	" The director, Christine Jeffs, and her gifted ensemble light up the dankest corners of the story, including the Lorkowskis' grim family secret." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 27, 2009
2/4	17%	The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)	" The cast is never less than competent. Still, you wonder why Madsen is making movies as meretricious as this one." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 27, 2009
1.5/4	72%	Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)	" The directors, Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon, who also wrote the shabby gag-book script with four other conspirators, simply throw everything at the wall and see if it will stick." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 27, 2009
2/4	33%	Knowing (2009)	" There's no time for romance, charm or comedy. The haunted characters in Knowing compete for the best graveyard looks." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 20, 2009
3/4	64%	Duplicity (2009)	" [Director Tony] Gilroy's skillful, witty follow-up to his writing-directing debut, Michael Clayton, [continues] to exercise his talent for baiting a narrative and getting viewers to jump to it." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 20, 2009
3/4	83%	I Love You, Man (2009)	" A shrewd balancing act between organic and artificial laughs. Even when it swings low, it connects." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 20, 2009
3/4	92%	La Graine et le Mulet (The Secret of the Grain) (Couscous) (2007)	" Writer-director Abdel Kechiche has wrought a definitive statement on how it feels to live in a subculture." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 13, 2009
0/4	41%	The Last House on the Left (2009)	" The movie means to be about how violence makes animals out of all of us, including the vengeful parents. Unfortunately, that also includes the audience." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 13, 2009
3/4	43%	Race to Witch Mountain (2009)	" The result may not be a diamond in the rough, but it is a nice, shiny zircon." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 13, 2009
2/4	66%	Che: Part One (The Argentine) (2009)	" The title and length suggest a biographical epic, but it's neither biographical nor epic. It's as if the director, Steven Soderbergh, wanted to take tissue samples of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's political life." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 6, 2009
2/4	84%	Medicine for Melancholy (2008)	" It's pretty in all the wrong ways: pretty slight, pretty preachy and pretty affected." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 6, 2009
4/4	97%	The Class (2008)	" The Class ranks with the very best films ever made about teaching, and it's unlike any English or American film about teaching ever made." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 6, 2009
1.5/4	64%	Watchmen (2009)	" The film's storytelling and image-making lack originality and vitality. Nothing sticks to your memory unless you come in with recollections of the book." — Baltimore Sun Posted Mar 4, 2009
2.5/4	32%	Fanboys (2008)	" Fanboys ambles along on a decent sprinkling of chuckles. The tide of in-jokes are funny whether you get them or not because the real humor lies in how they reflect a fraternal code." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 27, 2009
3.5/4	82%	Two Lovers (2008)	" It's a triangle movie that encompasses three moods and varieties of love (and how they all bleed into each other): domestic, romantic, erotic." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 27, 2009
	90%	Must Read After My Death (2007)	" I applaud Gigantic's desire to bring independent-film distribution into the new-millennial cutting edge. But I'll judge its success only after the company has streamed more real, live movies." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 26, 2009
4/4	96%	Waltz with Bashir (2008)	" The movie is a plea for all the peoples of the world to stop dancing with death." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 20, 2009
2.5/4	59%	The International (2009)	" Apart from the episode in the Guggenheim, the action in The International is distant and overcalculated." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 13, 2009
1.5/4	25%	Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)	" You never believe, even in a fantasy way, that Bloomwood could stumble into a job at a Manhattan-based financial magazine for a Conde Nast-like conglomerate." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 13, 2009
3/4	85%	Wendy and Lucy (2008)	" Even at 80 minutes, the film is like a short story that's a couple of pages too long. But the experience sticks with you, thanks largely to the actors." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 6, 2009
1/4	12%	Pink Panther 2 (2009)	" It's an everything-including-the kitchen-sink comedy -- and the sink has rusty pipes." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 6, 2009
3.5/4	89%	Coraline (2009)	" Selick catches you, along with Coraline, in a spider's web, and his visual splendor transfixes you, even when you feel the strands tightening around your brain." — Baltimore Sun Posted Feb 6, 2009
4/4	89%	Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008)	" Uproarious, moving and thrilling." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 30, 2009
1/4	28%	New In Town (2009)	" As a comic fable for hard times, New in Town is irredeemably moronic." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 30, 2009
1.5/4	58%	Taken (2009)	" In Taken, an excruciating atavism of a movie, father knows best in the worst way -- and he's ready to enforce it, come hell or high melodrama." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 30, 2009
2/4	39%	Inkheart (2009)	" Cold, bland and gimmicky." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 23, 2009
2.5/4	98%	The Wrestler (2008)	" Rourke is the one who saves The Wrestler again and again." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 16, 2009
2/4	57%	Defiance (2009)	" With the possible exception of Valkyrie, no recent movie has gotten less out of a mind-boggling piece of history than Defiance." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 16, 2009
2/4	70%	Last Chance Harvey (2009)	" Wthout an expansive vision or invention, a small-scale film can feel even smaller than its cast of dozens." — Baltimore Sun Posted Jan 16, 2009

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