ROTTEN TOMATOES: Mike McGranaghan

Official Websites:
Aisle Seat

MIKE MCGRANAGHAN

""What can I say? I'm about the love." - Edward Burns in "She's the One""

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Biography: I started doing movie reviews in 1986, when I joined the staff of my high school newspaper and won several Keystone awards (the Keystone award is the highest honor given to high school journalists in Pennsylvania). That was all the encouragement I needed to continue. While still in college, I became the film critic for two central Pennsylvania newspapers: The Selinsgrove Times-Tribune and The Middleburg Post. I stayed with those papers for five years. In 1995, I became film critic of Gamut! - an online magazine devoted to entertainment. My website (www.aisleseat.com) is an off-shoot of that magazine. Additionally, I am the on-air film critic for Sunbury Broadcasting Corporation, which operates three central PA radio stations. My reviews run weekly.

Favorites: Favorite Films - The Brothers McMullen, JFK, Fletch, Do the Right Thing, Chasing Amy, Fargo, The Blair Witch Project Favorite Directors - Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Edward Burns, Kevin Smith, Steven Soderbergh, the Farrelly Brothers, the Coen Brothers, John Waters, Edward D. Wood, Jr. Best of All Time: Schindler's List Worst of All Time: Caligula

Publications: Aisle Seat

Critics' Group: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews: 1083
Total QuickRatings: 385

Location: Central Pennsylvania

LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 94%	Crazy Heart (2009)	" Crazy Heart is more of a character study than a plot-driven film, but we've got a genuinely compelling character to examine here." Posted Dec 16, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 77%	Invictus (2009)	" Invictus shouldn't feel like just another sports movie; it should feel like a life movie. What a missed opportunity." Posted Dec 11, 2009
Rotten 0.5/4	Rotten 5%	Old Dogs (2009)	" *Getting your uvula pierced would be less painful than watching Old Dogs.*" Posted Dec 4, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 76%	Tormented (2009)	" A gruesome, edgy, ambitious, and sometimes funny horror tale that doesn't shy away from exploring adolescent cruelty." Posted Dec 4, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Rotten 57%	Brothers (2009)	" This is a sad story, no doubt, yet also one that leaves us with a bit of hope. All in all, a profoundly affecting and meaningful movie." Posted Dec 4, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 31%	Ninja Assassin (2009)	" Ninja Assassin could - and should - have been the Zombieland of martial arts flicks. Instead, it's just totally skip-able." Posted Nov 30, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 41%	Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)	" Painfully pretentious and shallow." Posted Nov 30, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 28%	The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)	" *Watching New Moon* is like being trapped in a room for two hours with a moody teenage girl who won't stop whining about how her boyfriend dumped her.**" Posted Nov 20, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 45%	Shorts (2009)	" Shorts is constantly pinballing back and forth, from one thing to the next, in such a hyperactive fashion that one wishes it would just slow down a bit." Posted Nov 19, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Rotten 57%	Uncertainty (2009)	" A tiny little piece of awesomeness." Posted Nov 19, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 44%	The Box (2009)	" A cool, philosophical mindfreak." Posted Nov 16, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 47%	My Sister's Keeper (2009)	" *The film has a profound and compelling premise. Regrettably, it seems intent on being about everything but* that premise.**" Posted Nov 16, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 39%	2012 (2009)	" A boring, stupid, overlong, obnoxious, soulless piece of Hollywood "product."" Posted Nov 15, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 54%	The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)	" It falls a bit short of the high bar it has set for itself, yet I respect the film's willingness to aim that high. And it does get enough right to be worth seeing." Posted Nov 7, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 87%	The House of the Devil (2009)	" If you like horror movies that actually have some artistic merit to them, this is definitely one of the more noteworthy pictures of the year." Posted Nov 7, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 77%	Afterschool (2009)	" This is a little movie well worth checking out. The performances are very natural, and the themes are enticingly provocative." Posted Nov 4, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 80%	Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)	" This Is It avoids the kind of messianic fervor that characterized Jackson's career. The man's work is simply allowed to speak for itself. There could be no more fitting tribute." Posted Oct 31, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 82%	Paranormal Activity (2009)	" Paranormal Activity goes on the short list of films that totally, completely freaked me out." Posted Oct 24, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Rotten 55%	Orphan (2009)	" This is the rare fright flick that is actually grounded in some genuine human emotion." Posted Oct 24, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 37%	Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)	" Starts off strongly, which only makes its drastic eventual decline that much more disappointing. What could have been a really quirky, edgy teen horror comedy instead turns into a crushing bore." Posted Oct 24, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 73%	Where the Wild Things Are (2009)	" A work of genuine imagination and intelligence that doesn't try to ram the same old feel-good platitudes down our collective throat." Posted Oct 21, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 24%	Law Abiding Citizen (2009)	" The mixture of gruesome revenge picture and self-satisfied message movie is deeply off-putting." Posted Oct 16, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 12%	Couples Retreat (2009)	" Couples Retreat is like watching somebody's boring vacation videos, except that they're filled with big stars." Posted Oct 9, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Fresh 77%	The Informant! (2009)	" *While The Informant!* has a lot going for it stylistically, the entertainment value is sorely lacking.**" Posted Oct 9, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 57%	The Invention of Lying (2009)	" A funny, cleverly-conceived, heartfelt expression of a point of view that is not nearly my own." Posted Oct 9, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 89%	Zombieland (2009)	" Zombieland makes undead cinema fresh again. This movie is just ridiculously, insanely, enormously entertaining." Posted Oct 2, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 40%	Surrogates (2009)	" The problem is simple: it's too short. The story introduces a series of gripping elements, then fails to fully capitalize on a single one of them. With a running time of just 88 minutes, how could it?" Posted Sep 25, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 62%	Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009)	" I Can Do Bad All By Myself may not be a model of tonal restraint, but it's well acted, it's funny, the music is phenomenal, and the religion is sincere." Posted Sep 21, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 44%	Jennifer's Body (2009)	" A good example of how someone [like writer Diablo Cody] with a fresh perspective and an original voice can make even a genre picture better." Posted Sep 18, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 27%	Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)	" *Ideally, you want* to see the male and female leads end up together in a romantic comedy; if not, it all starts to become kind of creepy.**" Posted Sep 17, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 58%	9 (2009)	" The fact that 9 looks so breathtakingly vivid and alive is reason enough to catch it on the big screen." Posted Sep 11, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 6%	Whiteout (2009)	" It has a great cast, an original thriller setting, and a compelling concept, and yet the central mystery is surprisingly limp." Posted Sep 11, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Fresh 63%	Extract (2009)	" *I didn't dislike Extract* by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not necessarily the kind of movie that's worth going out of your way to see, especially at full price.**" Posted Sep 7, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 86%	500 Days of Summer (2009)	" *I loved (500) Days of Summer* for many reasons, but for this one the most: I felt more during this movie than I have in any other romantic comedy in years.**" Posted Sep 2, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 21%	Halloween II (2009)	" After the success of his original, director Rob Zombie warned fans that he had no intention of making a cheesy sequel. Oh, how I wish he'd stayed true to that promise." Posted Aug 28, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 88%	Inglourious Basterds (2009)	" I think this is a key work in Tarantino's career, because it shows that he can pull off a masterpiece without resorting too much to his well-established bag of tricks." Posted Aug 23, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 90%	District 9 (2009)	" *Smart, provocative, fun, and exciting...District 9 is everything that Transformers 2* and G.I. Joe tried - and failed - to be.**" Posted Aug 20, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 26%	The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)	" With a comedy like this, you want to be laughing constantly, not every 15 or 20 minutes." Posted Aug 15, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 58%	17 Again (2009)	" *While it's not in the same classic league, the movie has a nice Back to the Future* vibe to it.**" Posted Aug 15, 2009
Rotten 1.5/4	Rotten 36%	G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)	" *I don't mind if something blows up every five minutes so long as I'm given a reason to care why* something is blowing up every five minutes.**" Posted Aug 12, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 75%	Julie & Julia (2009)	" Meryl Streep and Amy Adams are great fun to watch, and Streep could well earn yet another Oscar nomination." Posted Aug 7, 2009
Fresh	N/A	The Mighty Boosh - The Complete Season 1 ()	" "The Mighty Boosh" is so weird, so unpredictable, and so incessantly funny that I became completely hooked before the first episode was over." Posted Aug 2, 2009
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 68%	Funny People (2009)	" *Hilarious while also being poignant and wise, Funny People* is, hands down, my favorite movie of the summer.**" Posted Jul 31, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 14%	The Ugly Truth (2009)	" *I liked the Gerard Butler half of The Ugly Truth; the Katherine Heigl half, not so much.*" Posted Jul 29, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Rotten 50%	The Green Lantern - First Flight ()	" Superhero tales are best when they strive for some complexity; this one has an engrossing plot and some solid character development that grown-ups can appreciate." Posted Jul 29, 2009
Rotten 2.5/4	Rotten 8%	Waiting for Dublin (2009)	" The plot isn't entirely successful in achieving the farcical tone it aims for." Posted Jul 29, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Rotten 31%	The Answer Man (2009)	" The Answer Man is like a great big breath of fresh air on the first nice day of spring. It is a story with characters who feel real, as they try to find real answers to real problems." Posted Jul 25, 2009
Rotten 1/4	Rotten 24%	G-Force (2009)	" G-Force is being shown in both 2-D and digital 3-D formats. I saw it in 2-D, and that's the preferred format because it's one less dimension for the movie to suck in." Posted Jul 25, 2009
Rotten 2/4	Rotten 15%	I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009)	" My problem with the film is that Larry Doyle (who also penned the screenplay) seems to have softened what his novel was fundamentally about." Posted Jul 23, 2009
Fresh 3.5/4	Fresh 100%	Grey Gardens (2008)	" The movie would almost doubtlessly have garnered Oscar nominations for its two stars had it been released theatrically." Posted Jul 23, 2009

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0/4	Bloodrayne 2Offsite
0/4	Hannibal RisingOffsite
0/4	Steve-O: Don't Try This At Home 3 -...Offsite
0/4	Keep Your Right Up!Offsite
0.5/4	Old DogsOffsite
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0.5/4	An American CarolOffsite
0.5/4	Perfect StrangerOffsite
0.5/4	Lady in the WaterOffsite
0.5/4	IllusionOffsite

MIKE MCGRANAGHAN

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