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
Nov
17
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: The latest Marvel series to appear on Netflix has gotten a head-start: Jon Bernthal, who plays this particular brutal and haunted antihero, first portrayed the Punisher in a season of Netflix’s Daredevil, occupying the major story line as a former soldier seeking revenge for the mob-related deaths of his family. This new spinoff, therefore, doesn’t have to spend a lot of time establishing the superhero’s origin story – good thing, because the Punisher, te
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: This new film by Dee Rees is based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, a period piece often, and fairly, described as Faulkneresque. It’s set in Mississippi, after WWII, and is about a family of tenant farmers, and all the tensions that the region’s unforgiving conditions and unrepentant racism threw at them. Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige and Carey Mulligan star, with a strong supporting role provided by Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
Last week, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend got lots of comedy out of Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) retreating from her woes by going home to mother – who, played by Tovah Feldshuh, was unusually supportive. Unusually and, as it turned out, deceptively, by slipping Rebecca mood-altering drugs without Rebecca’s knowledge. Rebecca found and stole the pills, left her mother, and, on the plane back home, swallowed them all in a suicide attempt before informing the flight attendant. Then, at episode’s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
I saw this on Broadway, and recommend it to anyone who has seen, or loves, a lot of Broadway history, especially musicals. Harold Prince did a lot of amazing work as the producer of some of Stephen Sondheim’s best musicals, including Company and Follies and Sweeney Todd – but also did a lot of other amazing work, too, and tastes of them are here, enacted by a small but talented cadre of performers, each of whom gets a chance to shine. And, briefly, to play Prince himself. Check local
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
Hal Ashby directed this astounding 1979 film version of Jerzy Kosinki’s novella, a modern-day fable that took someone as great as Peter Sellers to embody the central role, and the slippery central concept. He plays a man upon whom everyone else projects what they wish, and interprets him accordingly. Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden and Richard Dysart co-star, and there’s a set piece, utilizing a Deodato instrumental, that is cinema perfection.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Chelsea Handler. Max Brooks. Rebecca Traister. Bill McKibben. Carl Bernstein. This is Bill Maher’s last show of the season, and it sure sounds like he intends to go out not with a whimper… but with a bang. The week’s top headlines, from tax bills to Al Franken, should provide all the fuel he needs for a big verbal bonfire.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
If you like This Is Us, you might take a fancy to the import series Love, Lies & Records...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This period comedy series, co-created by Paul Reiser of Mad about You fame and David Steven Simon, tells the story of a 19-year-old who misinterprets a form letter from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as a job offer, and leaves Nebraska for Hollywood, where he ends up working on Tonight, circa 1972. Ian Nelson plays the Carson-adoring young man, and Jane Levy, who starred in Suburgatory, immediately becomes the show’s real comic and soulful center as Joy, an assistant
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
In this new episode, Dean Norris, formerly Hank on AMC’s Breaking Bad, guest stars in his recurring role as an Army general – confronted with a question about whether he’s secretly hired Sheldon to work on a classified military operation.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
Things get messy, and deadly, in tonight’s new episode when the Penguin holds a fundraising dinner for his orphanage – and another Gotham City villain, the Pyg (a hogshead-wearing butcher of corrupt cops, played by Michael Cerveris), crashes the party as the self-appointed chef. My advice: Don’t order the pork.