Michael Sragow

Old school: the great action director talks about his latest, and the way in which the “elegant simplicity” of the western provides “primal fodder for a filmmaker”

The age of gold: a new series spotlights the brave new filmmaking of 1962, '63, and '64, after the wane of the studio era and before the rise of New Hollywood

Urban decay: Despite Matt Reeves’s tip-top casting and his usual virtuosity, the latest Caped Crusader reboot fails to reimagine this by-now commonplace material

Shifting sands: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune typifies the current mania for world-building over character-building

Cloak and dagger: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s engrossing World War II tale embeds an exposé of Japan’s bio-weapons program in the drama of a couple’s dueling loyalties

Man on wire: no director ever lived up to his last name better than Rush did in the Peter O’Toole-starring The Stunt Man

Lamont Johnson, USA/Mexico, 1981; Kino Lorber, DVD & Blu-Ray

Bursting bubbles: Sissy Spacek and Barbara Hershey star in two exemplary ’80s films about resourceful women standing up for their beliefs

It’s serious: Michael Crichton’s 1978 smash is a brisk, scary, clever thriller about a body-snatching scam featuring a magnetic Genevieve Bujold

The great divide: you can’t keep a canny exploitation movie down, and this one has a hook that’s a doozy

Yo teach: the Ben Affleck vehicle wants to be Manchester by the Sea on the hardwood, but it’s more like Hoosiers with a hangover

Hell on earth: Elem Klimov's 1985 war movie has few rivals in laying bare the horrors of man's favorite sport

A dog’s life: this flimsy adaptation of Jack London’s 1903 classic plays like any old mid-level, live-action Disney movie

Love on the skids: Julia Louis-Dreyfus possesses the ideal toolkit for this comedy-drama remake of Ruben Östlund’s 2014 Force Majeure

Zero sum: the Blake Lively/Jude Law espionage thriller induces a dreary, exhausting claustrophobia

Facing fears: in two new updates of horror classics, the sublime becomes ridiculous, and the ridiculous becomes a trip

Turbulent skies: Makoto Shinkai’s sixth feature-length cartoon oozes visual lyricism and primal yearning

Make-up test: the Tiffany Haddish vehicle is the kind of would-be edgy movie that will never alienate any segment of its target audience

Lost in space: J.J. Abrams’s nonsensical film contains so many resurrections it’s a wonder the release wasn't pushed back to Easter

Man on fire: Paul Walter Hauser’s inspired performance keeps Clint Eastwood’s latest from becoming a screed