Michael Sragow

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Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker
For 1,070 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Sragow's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 The Sea Inside
Lowest review score: 0 CJ7
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 623 out of 1070
  2. Mixed: 259 out of 1070
  3. Negative: 188 out of 1070
1070 movie reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Sragow
    Nobody Knows
    Kore-eda expresses the terror of the kids' predicament with a touch that's equally tender and dispassionate.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
    The result is harrowing and inspiring. As escapist entertainment, it's the movie of the year.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Michael Sragow
    Amadeus
    Except for the Mozart music and Tharp movements around the edges, Amadeus plays like a monument to mediocrity. The movie belongs to Salieri.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 63 Michael Sragow
    Russian Ark
    Sokurov, for all his accomplishment, is less a bold innovator than a raider of lost art.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Gomorrah
    For Americans, Gomorrah will play like every other Mafia epic - and no other Mafia epic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    To Be and to Have
    Little miracles spring up throughout this picture.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Sragow
    Mulholland Dr.
    A dizzying - sometimes frustrating - marvel of moviemaking instinct and ingenuity.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Park's imagination is as fecund as the bunnies that bob up and down from their rabbit holes in every corner of the Tottington garden.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    The Death of Mr. Lazarescu runs the same 2 1/2 hours as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," but what a difference a comic-dramatic purpose makes.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Odd Man Out
    Carol Reed's Odd Man Out is the rare movie classic that grows more relevant and compelling with every passing year. [29 Dec 2006, p.5C]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Sragow
    Brokeback Mountain
    Romanticism fights stoicism to a draw, and the movie grows ever more static, too. Down to the quasi-ambiguous hate-crime finish, Brokeback Mountain comes as close to being a still life as you can get with human characters.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 58 Michael Sragow
    Caché (Hidden)
    Cache is the feel-guilty movie of the new millennium.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Michael Sragow
    Baby Boy
    A mistaken message is a price a filmmaker pays when he tries to load weighty themes like the cycle of violence on an overgrown boy who scoots around on a bicycle.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 38 Michael Sragow
    Rock Star
    Rock Star neither touches a raw nerve nor garners any resonance as a period piece. You'd be better off renting "This is Spinal Tap."
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Michael Sragow
    Under the Sand
    Rampling's authority over splintered emotions has the force of revelation.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Sragow
    Black Narcissus
    This is a landmark of Hollywood-on-Thames trompe-l’oeil.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Sragow
    Million Dollar Baby
    In a boxing soap-opera way, Eastwood is trying to do for himself as a performer what Sergio Leone did for him in a spaghetti-western way: douse his rough-hewn banality with reflected emotional coloration.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 67 Michael Sragow
    Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    The result is not a first-class film noir but a top-grade acting class. You admire it without enjoying it.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Michael Sragow
    Sex and the City
    Sex and the City, as a film, is a testament to bad faith. It wants its characters to eat their wedding cake and have it, too.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 63 Michael Sragow
    Talk to Her
    The movie's cinematography is sumptuous, in its own intimate way. But all that's glorious about this film is the flesh tones. There isn't enough flesh and blood.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Sragow
    Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
    Hayao Miyazaki’s animated adventure, from 1984, is a magnificent anomaly—a rousing vision of scorched earth.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Sragow
    Sweet Sixteen
    In its peak moments, the movie delivers, all at once, genuine street wisdom and psychology and wrenching expressions of family and friendship.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Ponyo
    Best of all, Ponyo never ceases to be a genuine odyssey in short pants.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Only Angels Have Wings
    Hawks weaves brawny romance and humor and a man’s-man sort of heartbreak into his tribute to the ideal of vocation.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Sragow
    Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
    Ball and his cast overcome clichés with gusto.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Sragow
    Sabotage
    This movie is as wrenching as it is eruptive. Hitchcock never went further beyond pop than he did with Sabotage.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    Waking Life
    A beautiful display of celluloid bungee-jumping.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Michael Sragow
    The Bourne Ultimatum
    Few films combine a dense and tingling atmosphere with the headlong pacing and adventure of The Bourne Ultimatum.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    The Pianist
    Roman Polanski's new movie may be the greatest historical film centered on an enigmatic character since Lawrence of Arabia.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Michael Sragow
    The Edge of Heaven
    Though I love McCarthy's movie, The Edge of Heaven - with its virtuoso narrative and frames packed to bursting with unruly life - has the potency of "The Visitor" squared.
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