DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2017
Mar
3
 
 
This impressively informed parody of the Frankenstein films is only one of the two brilliant movies directed and co-written by Mel Brooks in 1974. (The other is Blazing Saddles. As film vintages go, for Mr. Brooks, not a bad year.) Starring and co-written by the equally gifted Gene Wilder, Young Frankenstein draws liberally, and inspiringly, from several movies in Universal’s Frankenstein canon, and gets the most out of so, so many cast members, from Wilder as the mad Dr. Frankenstein to M
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
3
 
 
TCM has saluted the Oscars, for more than a month, by presenting Oscar-winning movies alphabetically, from A to Z – and finally, as the last movie in this very long, entertainingly random celebration, here comes Z. It’s the 1969 French-Algerian film by Costa-Gavras, it’s intensely and overtly political, and it couldn’t be more unsettlingly relevant. Originally presented during the start of the Nixon administration, it’s a drama, and a warning, about how civil libert
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
Some people who have followed the America’s Test Kitchen public television series over the past 16 seasons or so may have a high-school flashback while watching the current season: The regular teacher didn’t show up...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
Matias Solomon has already experienced resurrection, Edi Gathegi muses. So why not go for redemption as well?...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
TCM is up to W in its alphabetical salute to the Oscars – and that means West Side Story, one of the best movie musicals ever made, gets a prime-time showing tonight. This 1969 version of the Broadway musical, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Jerome Robbins, and starring performances by Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, and Russ Tamblyn. Tamblyn and Beymer would reunite in the original Twin Peaks TV series – and are reuniting again
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
Night III. Tonight’s episode, the third of four, takes the narrative up to the early 1990s, as Cleve (Guy Pearce) devotes himself to organizing the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – while feeling the effects of AIDS all around him, and within him.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
Last week, I offended a few TVWW readers by writing about Riverdale with a phrase considered uncomfortably cavalier and insensitive. I apologize. I should have said something closer to the phrase that Riverdale was “like a shotgun wedding between Twin Peaks and Gossip Girl.” We live, we learn. So tonight, I’m treading softly. Tonight’s episode, in which Archie, and Josie and the Pussycats perform at the annual Riverdale variety talent show, is titled “Faster, Pussyc
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
Tonight’s installment in this impressively thoughtful miniseries is called “Spark of Madness” – a phrase attributed to, and applicable to, Robin Williams – whose moods and mental afflictions, and those of other gifted but partly troubled comedians, are the subject of tonight’s hour.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
2
 
 
This is another W movie showing up alphabetically in TCM’s Oscar salute tonight – but the timing of this particular showing couldn’t be more fortuitous. This 1962 cult horror film starred two legendary actresses, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (pictured) – and on Sunday, FX launches a new anthology miniseries, Feud, that begins with a multi-part dramatization called Bette and Joan, recreating the behind-the-scenes battles in making What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This Feu
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Mar
1
 
 
The great Al Pacino can mumble with the best of them, as he proved in Warren Beatty’s wacky 1990 caper movie Dick Tracy. Arguably —  and not for the first time in his storied career — Pacino stole the movie...