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

 
 
2015
Sep
27
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Mickey (Jon Voight) is targeted by the Armenian mob he double-crossed – but the person I’m really worried about in this Season 3 is the teacher who has flirted with flirting with Ray’s daughter Bridget. Tonight, Ray (Liev Schreiber) finds out about it… and when Bridget says her dad would kill him if he knew, she’s not using hyperbole.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
27
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This new ABC series is an obvious variant on the How to Get Away with Murder model – start with a serious crime (in this case, a terrorist attack blowing up New York’s Grand Central Terminal), and spend a year swimming with the fishes. Or, at least, the red herrings. The premiere episode isn’t that engaging, but its leading lady, as a Quantico trainee who both survives and is suspected of planning the blast, is a potential breakout star. In the States, that is:
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
Back during Don Johnson’s burst into stardom on NBC’s Miami Vice, ABC’s Dynasty also roamed the earth as the 1984-’85 TV season’s No. 1 prime-time series. Now they’re both back in ABC’s Dynasty-like Blood & Oil...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
What the real-life world really doesn’t need right now is another devastating terrorist attack on New York City or grossly incompetent screening of would-be FBI agents at the Quantico Academy. You’ll get both in ABC’s Quantico...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
If you just watched the premiere of NBC’s new Blindspot, a drama series about a woman who emerges from a giant duffel bag in Times Square with no memory of her identity or past, and thought: “Wow, that’s new!” – well, not really. In the 1965 Western series A Man Called Shenandoah, Robert Horton (from Wagon Train) played a man, shot and left for dead in the Wild West, who gives himself the name of Shenandoah and roams the territory searching for clues to his identity
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
The Laura Hillenbrand biography upon which this 2014 movie is based was a wonderful, well-researched read. The movie version, directed by Angelina Jolie and with a screenplay whose collaborators include Joel and Ethan Coen and Richard LaGravenese, is dramatic and earnest – though not, in some sections, as vividly wrenching as the original author’s powerful prose about Louis Zamperini, whose stories as a competitive runner, a WWII fighter plane crewman and a prisoner of war are indivi
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This is part two of the opening episode of Season 9 in this show’s modern era. Last week’s episode started with a typically imaginative and creepy image: a “hand mine” field of human-like hands that emerge from the ground, grab the ankles of people walking in the field, and pull them below ground. What was even more unsettling, though, came later: the deaths of two familiar female characters at the hands of the Daleks. (Well, not the hands. Daleks have no
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
What a great movie: Jack Nicholson starred in this Milos Forman film version of the Ken Kesey novel, and his performance solidified his “Jack Nicholson” screen persona and charisma in the process. Louise Fletcher is fabulous as well, and there’s a particular joy in watching the then-unknown players who portray members of the mental institution in which Nicholson’s Randall McMurphy finds himself. Look! There’s Christopher Lloyd! And Danny DeVito! And Brad Dourif! And
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
26
 
 
Speaking of movie anniversaries, another movie that came out 40 years ago, getting a special television telecast tonight, is the 1975 cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show – shown by HBO, quite appropriately, as a midnight movie. That’s how, in theaters, this musical movie comedy went from initial obscurity to major cult status, as young audiences gathered to sing along, dress along, and do the time warp again. Tim Curry stars, with support from such future stars as Susan Sarandon
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Sep
25
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This is cycle No. 27 for this globetrotting show, which this time pushes off from Venice Beach in California. The host, as always, is Phil Keoghan – and wouldn’t you like to have his frequent-flier miles?