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
Feb
29
 
 
The short-lived sitcom Day by Day premiered on NBC on this date in 1988...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
29
 
 
Here comes another TCM double feature featuring the same actor, and this one really shows the subject’s range. From 1967, it’s The Graduate, in which Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin, drives a spiffy sports car through a particularly bumpy stretch of his life, just after college graduation. He has an affair with the wife of a friend of his father, then becomes attracted to their daughter. What to watch for, in this relentlessly clever film directed by Mike Nichols, with music by
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
29
 
 
Luc Besson, writer and director of 1990’s La Femme Nikita, wrote and directed this 2019 movie, an almost next-generation update with a similar plot. Sasha Luss plays the title role, a beautiful Russian woman who is recruited as a superspy and deadly assassin. Some of the story points are so similar – an imperious female trainer (this time Helen Mirren) running the would-be killer through their paces, and an assigned hit intentionally botched to test her mettle under fire &n
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
29
 
 
If you’ve watched this series from the start, and seen all its promos, you’ve probably seen one image dozens of times: an elephant on its hind legs, stretching with its trunk to reach and pull down some leaves from the top of a tall tree. Well, this week’s episode is devoted to Africa, and that elephant is bound to appear tonight.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
29
 
 
This week’s new episode features former SNL writer John Mulaney returning, once again, as host – and if his previous appearances are any indication, he’ll arrive with a particularly funny monolog. And tonight’s musical guest is worth anticipating, too: It’s former Talking Heads front man David Byrne.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
28
 
 
At the climax of last week’s episode, The Bone Collector’s wife phoned him and demanded he come home immediately. She had found his secret stash of Polaroids of his victims – but believed, much to her relief, his false claims of innocence and ignorance. Until, that is, she noticed that one of her female friends, who had recently visited, was in one of the photographs. Promos for tonight’s episode show her bound and gagged in the basement, suggesting the Bone Collecto
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
28
 
 
TCM’s deliriously entertaining double features, showing two films featuring the same performer, continue tonight – but where usually there has been a span of decades between the movies chosen, tonight there’s only a six-year gap. Both films co-star Natalie Wood, beginning at 8 p.m. ET with 1955’s Rebel without a Cause. Then, at 10 p.m. ET, comes 1961’s Splendor in the Grass (pictured). In both, she stars opposite very magnetic and brooding y
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
28
 
 
Taron Egerton, who played Eggsy in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, stars as Elton John in this very authorized 2019 film treatment (the real Elton John is an executive producer, and his husband, David Furnish, is a producer). John’s musical partner, Bernie Taupin, is played by Jamie Bell, but Taupin is not a credited producer on Rocketman. The dramatic biography’s screenplay is written by Lee Hall, who doubtlessly was approved by Elton John because Hall had written t
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
28
 
 
This week’s stock market black-diamond downhill slide, the Trump administration’s slow-motion reaction to the threat of a pandemic, last Tuesday’s yell-fest of a Democratic primary debate, and tomorrow’s high-stakes South Carolina Democratic primary – it’s all up for grabs in tonight’s live Real Time.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Feb
27
 
 
I recommend this movie a lot – usually, every time it pops up unedited on TV – and this is no exception. Martin Scorsese’s 1976 movie is a masterpiece of filmmaking, and Robert De Niro gives a performance as singular, and defining, as Marlon Brando’s in A Streetcar Named Desire a generation before. And pay particular attention, this time around, to some of the supporting players usually overlooked when people discuss Taxi Driver – Albert Brooks,