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

 
 
2016
May
16
 
 
SERIES FINALE: When this season finale was written, the writers knew that Stana Katic’s Kate Beckett was leaving the series – but didn’t know the series itself would be leaving ABC as well. So if you’re longing for a sense of finality with tonight’s episode, lower your expectations.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
15
 
 
The technology of animation has gotten to the point where tonight, The Simpsons can end its episode with a wild TV gimmick: having Homer conclude an episode on impov comedy by improvising answers to questions posed “in real time” by fans. How exactly will this be accomplished? I’m not at all sure – but I’m sure I’ll be watching. For more on tonight's special event, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
15
 
 
James Cagney stars in this 1949 film noir gangster film, returning to the genre he helped make famous a decade earlier. One thing about his acting approach to playing tough guys remains the same: He speaks softly and carries a heavy machine gun.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
15
 
 
If you’re taking odds on which characters will emerge triumphantly this season, I’d counsel you to bet on the women. This season’s story lines had them starting out so deeply at the bottom of the barrel – either blinded, humiliated and shorn, or captured and isolated – that they’ve got almost nowhere to go but up. And tonight, I suspect at least a few of them will do just that.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
15
 
 
Last week, Eva Green’s character did something unexpected, unforgettable, and, on this series, perhaps unprecedented. She smiled. Repeatedly, as she began visiting a natural history museum curator and finding him even more interesting than his exhibits. Lots of other things are happening quickly on Penny Dreadful this year – part of the show is turning into a Western, while another part has one of Frankenstein’s creatures attempting to play god herself. If you’ve yet to s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
15
 
 
The missing votes have been found – they just haven’t been counted yet. And if the results are revealed tonight, they’ll let us know what to expect from the remainder of this season, for Selina and the other funny, foul-mouthed characters on this political satire.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Seeing three minutes of Homer Simpson on a Simpsons show might not seem like a big deal if the three minutes he’s doing this Sunday (5/15) weren’t going to be live...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Like World Cup Soccer, this is a global competition to which the U.S. has arrived relatively late, in terms of both awareness and enthusiasm. Contestants from, this year, 42 countries have competed to be voted the best show-biz act in the world – and today, for the first time in the competition’s history, the finals are being televised live in the United States. On the Logo cable network, in mid-afternoon… but still. This is where ABBA got its start all those decades ago &ndas
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Part 8 of 8. This Ken Burns and company series ends its repeat run with an episode devoted to jazz hands. Just kidding. It’s really about modern jazz, and one of the key figures – still alive and playing, as well as talking, at the time this series was produced – in Dave Brubeck, whose “Take Five” and other recordings in the 1950s allowed jazz to slide into the relative mainstream. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Billy Crudup stars as a not-so-mad professor in this fact-based 2015 movie, about the short-lived but still infamous 1971 Stanford University social-behavior experiment in which students were assigned roles as either prisoners or guards – and, in both cases, ordered to do things that were likely to go against their normal nature and sense of ethics and morality.