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

 
 
2019
Aug
31
 
 
The star saluted for this month’s, and hence this year’s, final evening of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” is Kirk Douglas – a star with so many famous films that a lot of his big titles are not even represented today and tonight. But many others are, and that entertaining roster includes Douglas as a slimy movie producer in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful (2 p.m. ET), as Vincent Van Gogh in 1956’s Lust for Life (4 p.m. ET),&nbs
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
31
 
 
Melissa McCarthy plays a real person, literary forger Lee Israel, in this 2018 movie that allows for plenty of character-driven laughs, while staying basically true to the story of the woman who wrote, forged and sold bogus letters alleged to be actual written correspondences from Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward and others. Starring as Israel’s co-conspirator in this white-collar crime wave is Richard E. Grant, whose byplay with McCarthy is dryly delicious.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
31
 
 
When you see crowd scenes in teen movies, you sometimes wonder what happens to all the characters who never even get named, but just fill out the floor. Well, one of them grew up to become Valerie Harper...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
31
 
 
At first, Carnival Row sounds like a ripped-from-the-headlines tale  – immigrants and biases and such. It's not, actually. It's ripped (very slowly) from the dormitory wall...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
It was supposed to be regional music, rural music. Then bluegrass spread way beyond that...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Two streaming services are premiering shows today that aim to fill the void left by the departure of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This is Amazon’s attempt – and it stars Orlando Bloom as a police inspector in a period city populated not only by humans like himself, but “Faefolk,” the catch-all description for faeries, fawns and other creatures that, in this world, are anything but imaginary. (The lead Fae is played by Cara Delevingne, pictured h
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This new Netflix series is set 50 years before the events in Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, which was released in 1982. Movie technology has advanced exponentially since then, and Age of Resistance certainly benefits from it – but this revisiting of Henson’s imaginative world is populated by an old-fashioned technique: puppets. Ten episodes, all available for viewing today, continue the vision that Henson once called his proudest achievement
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 

When the late Jim Henson released the Dark Crystal movie back in 1982, gasps shot through the Henson universe... 

 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
The winged, hardscrabble faeries of Amazon Prime’s Carnival Row tend to cause flaps, and not only when flying...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
Realistically, most of the folks who watch a new PBS special on bluegrass will probably be folks who already like it...