Critics » Michael Sragow » Rotten
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

Worst Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 423
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
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
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
F 43% Death Race (2008) " In movies like The Bank Job, Jason Statham has shown the potential to be a British Steve McQueen, but he'll never get the chance if he keeps making gobblers like Death Race." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 22, 2008
F 45% The Strangers (2008) " Opening against Sex and the City, it's counterprogramming that runs counter to any sane notion of art or entertainment." — Baltimore Sun
Posted May 30, 2008
f 51% CJ7 (2008) " Chow is so heavy-handed at erecting wish-fulfilling or sentimental setups that each slapstick reversal becomes easy to predict. He showers heroes and villains alike with sap." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Apr 4, 2008
F 52% Margot at the Wedding (2007) " Margot at the Wedding is a Christmas gift for high-class depressives: a compendium of malaise fit for an L.L. Bean catalog." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Dec 14, 2007
F 5% Good Luck Chuck (2007) " It's stupefying in its dullness and vulgarity." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Sep 21, 2007
D- 39% Hot Rod (2007) " You may enjoy the way Schaffer and Samberg prolong Rod's pratfalls to absurd length, but the pleasure fades because there's no skill to the slapstick, only glorified amateurism." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 3, 2007
d- 23% Evan Almighty (2007) " Evan Almighty is a colossal dud - a high-concept low comedy made by people who can't tell a pratfall from a pitfall and stumble into every one." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jul 10, 2007
D- 17% Georgia Rule (2007) " Fonda's Georgia is hatchet-swinging Carrie Nation and bromide-bleating Dr. Phil rolled into one." — Baltimore Sun
Posted May 12, 2007
D 27% What Happens in Vegas (2008) " What Happens in Vegas is the kind of terrible mistake performers as big as Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher usually make at the beginning of their careers, when they're anxious to break into the movies, or at the end, when they're struggling for a comeback" — Baltimore Sun
Posted May 9, 2008
D 14% Deception (2008) " Williams has no chance to create a character, and McGregor's is one big -- no, slender -- cliche. And if it's fun at first to see Jackman acting urbane instead of all Wolverine-like, by the end he's just another brute in a suit." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Apr 25, 2008
D 52% Funny Games (2008) " Funny Games is an art house Hostel -- it mistakes self-consciousness for intelligence." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Mar 14, 2008
D 22% Never Back Down (2008) " This film's Achilles' heel is its brain." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Mar 14, 2008
D 58% Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) " Tykwer's smash-and-grab directing style lacks the magisterial flair of the original novel by Patrick Suskind, which was celebrated by no less than John Updike in The New Yorker. It's hard to judge a book right after you've seen the movie, but I hated it." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jan 5, 2007
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
1/4 11% Couples Retreat (2009) " Every time the performers insinuate some fresh response, the concepts close in on them. I began to dread even the funny bits, because I knew director Peter Billingsley would milk them to death." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Oct 8, 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
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
1/4 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
1/4 10% Bride Wars (2009) " Even if the slapstick were brilliantly choreographed, the movie's view of marriage, women and, for that matter, men would probably sink it to oblivion." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jan 9, 2009
1/4 27% Seven Pounds (2008) " The whole narrative is too hollow and rickety as well as gimmicky for Muccino to breathe much life into it." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Dec 19, 2008
27% Punisher: War Zone (2008) " All [director] Alexander proves in Punisher: War Movie is that a martial-arts-trained woman can make a film just as stupid, coarse and numbing as any muscle man." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Dec 5, 2008
1/4 65% Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) " [Smith] fails to wring any memorable comedy from shoestring porno filmmakers because his own filmmaking is just as amateurish and slovenly." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Oct 31, 2008
1/4 54% Choke (2008) " Choke gives sexual anarchy a bad name." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Oct 18, 2008
21% Fred Claus (2007) " The storytelling and focus are all over the map." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Nov 9, 2007
1/4 72% Elephant (2003) " Far from giving us a new and revelatory view of adolescence, he comes up with choreographed cliches." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Dec 5, 2003
83% Thirteen Days (2000) " Wins an undeservedly high interest level because of what it covers, not how well it covers it." — Salon.com
Posted Dec 25, 2000
40% Proof of Life (2000) " For all its nail-biting fusillades, it fails to score a shot to the heart." — Salon.com
Posted Dec 8, 2000
46% Up at the Villa (2000) " Despite the prestigious talents involved, this is strictly 'Minor Piece Theatre.'" — Salon.com
Posted Jan 1, 2000
65% Dinosaur (2000) " Well, Bambi meets Godzilla again in the new computer-cartoon epic Dinosaur, but the results aren't so witty." — Salon.com
Posted Jan 1, 2000
D+ 8% 10,000 B.C. (2008) " Even as a fantasy spectacle, 10,000 B.C. is sorely in need of intelligent design." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Mar 7, 2008
D+ 20% Death Sentence (2007) " The pretension of this movie is exasperating." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 31, 2007
D+ 44% Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007) " This series has become so bloated and laborious that the plot -- and its subplots and countersubplots -- puncture any enjoyment you may have in this movie's daft slapstick and bold visual coups." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jun 30, 2007
D+ 19% The Ex (2007) " Destined to land on Comedy Central and make Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and South Park fans wonder, "Who ever put good money into that?!"" — Baltimore Sun
Posted May 12, 2007
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
C- 10% Hell Ride (2008) " What's the point of paying a semi-burlesque tribute to genres whose lowdown charm rests on their unselfconscious energy and feckless disregard for convention and propriety?" — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 8, 2008
C- 68% Pineapple Express (2008) " How much you enjoy Pineapple Express may depend on what associations (or substances) you bring into the theater with you. As an action comedy, it's just a bad trip." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 6, 2008
C- 13% The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) " Three yetis, a yak and a couple of yuks. That's all you get in the way of original entertainment in The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Aug 1, 2008
C- 54% Mamma Mia! (2008) " A party where everyone is so desperate to have a good time that it makes you miserable." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jul 18, 2008
C- 14% The Love Guru (2008) " To judge from the crowd reaction, a phalanx of true believers might, indeed, go along for the ride, but newcomers to the Mike Myers experience will leave this love train early." — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jun 20, 2008
C- 17% The Happening (2008) " Shyamalan wants the rustling of wind through greenery to evoke the same shudders in The Happening that the gathering of birds did in Hitchcock's The Birds" — Baltimore Sun
Posted Jun 13, 2008
C- 50% Sex and the City (2008) " Since it clocks in at almost 2 1/2 hours, you may think, sight unseen, that the movie version of the HBO smash Sex and the City is guilty of wretched excess. Pathetic excess is more like it." — Baltimore Sun
Posted May 30, 2008
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