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

 
 
2020
Mar
4
 
 
TCM has been doing brilliant double features all this month – but today, MGM HD gets in on the act… by showing a double feature of Sidney Poitier films, only a few years apart in time, but miles apart in tone. First, at 10:30 p.m. ET, comes 1963’s Lilies of the Field, in which Poitier plays a temporary handyman carpenter helping out a gaggle of singing nuns. (Well, he gets them to sing, at one point.) Then, at 12:05 a.m. ET, comes 1958’s The Defiant Ones,&
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
4
 
 
If an hour-long TV show these days can mostly be funny, there's no reason a half-hour show can't be mostly serious...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
3
 
 
Today’s Super Tuesday voting is an important, unusually unpredictable affair, thanks to several Democratic candidates dropping out and endorsing Joe Biden, whose decisive win in South Carolina revived his prospects as his party’s more centrist choice. Bernie Sanders still is expected to emerge victoriously from the 14 states voting today (along with Americans abroad and those in American Samoa) – but the question now is the margin of victory, and whether remaining riv
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
3
 
 
Director Robert Drew’s documentary was released in October 1963, only four months after the events captured in the film, and only a month before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Crisis is a study, with remarkable access to the Oval Office and elsewhere, of Kennedy’s treatment of a pivotal civil rights confrontation that same year. Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a strict segregationist, had vowed to stand in the doorway of the University of Alabama, and refuse entry
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
I’m absolutely loving this season of Saul, now that Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill has officially adopted the mantle of Saul Goodman. It means the world of Breaking Bad, and all its colorful, memorable characters, is just around the corner. And look! Here comes one now…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Two of my favorite British TV actors of recent years, Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard, star in this new sitcom, as parents who are unmarried and absolutely harried. The message seems to be that comedy is hard, but parenting is harder – especially when your own parents still are part of the mix. Freeman, of Sherlock, TV’s Fargo, and British TV’s The Office, always exceeds expectations. And Haggard, from Episodes and 
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
This is episode five of this documentary about the Monopoly McDonald’s promotional scam, and who propagated it, and the bizarre twists that occurred along the way. And it’s not the last episode, so the road has more twisted twists to come.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
Last night, Dispatches from Elsewhere began with one of the most stunning series openings I’ve ever seen: a character in close-up (played by Richard E. Grant), simply and silently staring back at me, and all of us watching, for almost 30 seconds. Wow. The first four episodes are named after, and devoted to, the central game-playing characters. The premiere was called “Peter,” and followed the sad-sack observant loner played by Jason Segel, who also happens to be the s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
Breeders seems like a strange sitcom to show up on FX...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
2
 
 
Television used to give us plenty of perfect parents. Father knew best. Ozzie and Harriet had it all figured out...