Published by Film Society of Lincoln Center

Michael Sragow

Deep Focus: Alita: Battle Angel

By Michael Sragow
February 15, 2019
These arms of mine: the comic-book adaptation is aces as spectacle, but stumbles in scenes about family, romance, and the souls of machines

Deep Focus: The Lincoln Cycle

By Michael Sragow
February 7, 2019
A flat circle: the 1917 series, screening February 9 in Film Comment Selects, spins tales from the life of The Great Emancipator

Deep Focus: Miss Bala

By Michael Sragow
February 1, 2019
A new glossy remake is the first feasible argument for our southern neighbor to pay for building a wall: to keep Hollywood hacks out of the country.

Deep Focus: Serenity

By Michael Sragow
January 25, 2019
The middle-aged man and the sea: A stellar cast and a froth of plot twists can't keep Steven Knight’s nutty noir afloat

Deep Focus: Buffalo Boys

By Michael Sragow
January 10, 2019
Fighting mad: two brothers take mighty vengeance on an imperialist villain in a kinetic Indonesian action adventure

Deep Focus: Welcome to Marwen

By Michael Sragow
January 4, 2019
Small soldiers: Robert Zemeckis reimagines the traumatized world of a Navy veteran who exorcises his demons through customized action figures

Deep Focus: Mary Poppins Returns

By Michael Sragow
December 20, 2018
Air show: the revisitation of classic material yields holiday delights and a delightful performance from Emily Blunt

Deep Focus: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

By Michael Sragow
December 14, 2018
Flat-out fun: the late superhero arrival to 2018 turns out to be deliciously entertaining

Deep Focus: Sicilian Ghost Story

By Michael Sragow
November 30, 2018
Woodland creatures: Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s gritty fantasia Sicilian Ghost Story sets a Cosa Nostra kidnapping against a backdrop of expressive menace

Deep Focus: Anna and the Apocalypse

By Michael Sragow
November 21, 2018
School lunches: Anna and the Apocalypse puts a spring in the step of the old zombie song-and-dance

Deep Focus: Outlaw King

By Michael Sragow
November 9, 2018
Axe naturally: a 14th-century Scottish hero comes to the screen with grit and grime but not much gravity.

Deep Focus: A Private War

By Michael Sragow
November 2, 2018
First responder: a hard-charging journalist goes for broke in documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman's fiction feature debut

Deep Focus: Mid90s

By Michael Sragow
October 25, 2018
Skate kids: Jonah Hill makes his directorial debut with a sensitively observed, modestly conceived story of a skateboarder just growin' up

Deep Focus: First Man

By Michael Sragow
October 11, 2018
Mooning about: Damien Chazelle gives us a nobly suffering Neil Armstrong in an outwardly nervy but fundamentally cautious account of the lunar landing

Deep Focus: The Old Man & the Gun

By Michael Sragow
September 27, 2018
Exit strategy: Robert Redford attempts another elegant swan song as a bank robber in David Lowery’s sentimental caper

Deep Focus: The Sisters Brothers

By Michael Sragow
September 21, 2018
Wild frontiers: Jacques Audiard goes West with John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix and brings back gold

Deep Focus: White Boy Rick

By Michael Sragow
September 14, 2018
Dependence: director Yann Demange gets inside the workings of a complicated family through an undercover drug drama

Deep Focus: John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection

By Michael Sragow
September 6, 2018
Permanent matchpoint: a film assembled from 16mm footage posits the volatile genius of a temperamental tennis star

Deep Focus: Operation Finale

By Michael Sragow
August 24, 2018
Rendered to justice: the incredible story of Adolph Eichmann’s capture in Argentina keeps getting undermined by the filmmaker’s faulty vision

Deep Focus: Crazy Rich Asians

By Michael Sragow
August 17, 2018
High stakes: the energetic comedic romance tracks a woman who follows love but must reckon with the codes and cliques of the elite