Michael Sragow

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

Deep Focus: A Prayer Before Dawn

By Michael Sragow

August 9, 2018

Jailhouse schlock: faces and bodies get smashed in Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s prison drama, but audience hearts are left untouched

Deep Focus: Christopher Robin

By Michael Sragow

August 3, 2018

Flies in the honeypot: the world of A. A. Milne collides with grownup realities in a new screen portrayal

Deep Focus: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

By Michael Sragow

July 26, 2018

Can-do attitude: the latest entry in the action franchise wrings some more suspense out of its espionage hijinks

Deep Focus: Fred & Ginger

By Michael Sragow

July 12, 2018

Lighter than air: Astaire and Rogers have still got it after all these years, as proven in Film Society’s new complete retrospective

Deep Focus: Ant-Man and the Wasp

By Michael Sragow

July 5, 2018

The sting: Peyton Reed and Paul Rudd keep the spark alive in the latest story about the size-shifting superhero

Deep Focus: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

By Michael Sragow

June 28, 2018

Everybody knows: no one is spared the physical and moral brutality of dirty warfare in the cartel thriller follow-up