Published by Film Society of Lincoln Center

Michael Sragow

Deep Focus: Hunt for the Wilderpeople

By Michael Sragow
June 23, 2016
Kiwi haikus: the director of What We Do in the Shadows returns with a charming tale of unlikely kinship

Deep Focus: Finding Dory

By Michael Sragow
June 16, 2016
Deep feelings: Andrew Stanton's follow-up to Finding Nemo manages to be poignant and playfully self-referential

Deep Focus: De Palma

By Michael Sragow
June 9, 2016
Private audience: the oft-controversial auteur walks us through his work in Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's detailed documentary

Deep Focus: The President

By Michael Sragow
June 2, 2016
Bill of rights (and wrongs): Mohsen Makhmalbaf's political parable preaches without persuading

Deep Focus: Alice Through the Looking Glass

By Michael Sragow
May 26, 2016
Tweedledum and tweedledumber: the follow-up to Tim Burton's reimagined Alice in Wonderland replaces good old-fashioned nonsense with self-help cant

Deep Focus: The Nice Guys

By Michael Sragow
May 19, 2016
The hustle: Shane Black's disco-era private-eye flick fails to deliver on the promise of its off-kilter odd-couple pairing

Deep Focus: Money Monster

By Michael Sragow
May 12, 2016
Profits before people: without the performances (or plausibility) to back up its critique, this high-concept financial crisis revenge fable fails to deliver

Deep Focus: Captain America: Civil War

By Michael Sragow
May 5, 2016
Coalition building: more than a series of setpieces, the latest Marvel film offers up taut storytelling and legitimate drama

Review: A Bigger Splash

By Michael Sragow
May 3, 2016
(Luca Guadagnino, Italy/France, 2015)

Interview: Tom Skerritt

By Michael Sragow
April 29, 2016
The strong, talkative type: on working with Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Tom Hanks, and Seth MacFarlane

Deep Focus: Viktoria

By Michael Sragow
April 28, 2016
Chip off the old bloc: Maya Vitkova’s Soviet-era tragicomedy satirizes commie kitsch and the new woman

Deep Focus: Tale of Tales

By Michael Sragow
April 21, 2016
Magical thinking: Matteo Garrone adapts three 17th-century Neopolitan fables, warts (and fleas and sea monsters) and all

Deep Focus: Green Room

By Michael Sragow
April 14, 2016
Show's over: punks meet hardcore violence in Jeremy Saulnier's latest

Deep Focus: Demolition

By Michael Sragow
April 6, 2016
All better now: courting the true madness of grief, Jean-Marc Vallée can't escape the clutches of cliché

Deep Focus: The Dark Horse

By Michael Sragow
March 31, 2016
Chess is life: writer-director James Napier Robertson tells a true story of redemption through the game of kings and a bravura lead performance

Deep Focus: Born to Be Blue

By Michael Sragow
March 24, 2016
My funny valentine: Ethan Hawke soulfully inhabits a somewhat fictionalized version of Chet Baker in this effective portrait of a jazzman

Deep Focus: Fireworks Wednesday

By Michael Sragow
March 17, 2016
What the maid saw: Asghar Farhadi's slow-burning, ambiguous family drama deftly plays all sides

Deep Focus: Eye in the Sky

By Michael Sragow
March 10, 2016
Closed circuit: Gavin Hood crafts a tense, globe-hopping thriller that gives full berth to the moral complexities of drone warfare

Interview: Jan Troell

By Michael Sragow
March 4, 2016
Pioneer spirit: the Swedish auteur speaks about his classic tales of unsettled lands, The Emigrants and The New Land

Studies in Light and Place

By Michael Sragow
March 3, 2016
The production designer Jack Fisk on catching life unawares with Terrence Malick