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

 
 
2017
Nov
18
 
 
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: This two-part, four-hour documentary on the 1959 murder case immortalized by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood is chilling. It uses period audio recordings and film clips, as well as new audio of the victims' relatives, speaking for the first time about the case, to present a fuller portrait than ever before of the senseless slaughter of a Kansas family. Capote enters the story midway through tonight's Part 1, but the entire documentary is well worth viewing, for what it says
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: This new Netflix documentary utilizes a rich treasure trove of formerly unseen footage, filmed for a proposed but unrealized documentary during the time in 1999 when Jim Carrey played performance-art comic Andy Kaufman in the biographical movie Man on the Moon. It also interviews, at length, present-day Carrey, with a rich, David Letterman-style beard, reflecting on his life and comedy, and Kaufman’s, and how they intersected, in and beyond the movie they made. Carrey
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: The latest Marvel series to appear on Netflix has gotten a head-start: Jon Bernthal, who plays this particular brutal and haunted antihero, first portrayed the Punisher in a season of Netflix’s Daredevil, occupying the major story line as a former soldier seeking revenge for the mob-related deaths of his family. This new spinoff, therefore, doesn’t have to spend a lot of time establishing the superhero’s origin story – good thing, because the Punisher, te
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: This new film by Dee Rees is based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, a period piece often, and fairly, described as Faulkneresque. It’s set in Mississippi, after WWII, and is about a family of tenant farmers, and all the tensions that the region’s unforgiving conditions and unrepentant racism threw at them. Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige and Carey Mulligan star, with a strong supporting role provided by Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
Last week, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend got lots of comedy out of Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) retreating from her woes by going home to mother – who, played by Tovah Feldshuh, was unusually supportive. Unusually and, as it turned out, deceptively, by slipping Rebecca mood-altering drugs without Rebecca’s knowledge. Rebecca found and stole the pills, left her mother, and, on the plane back home, swallowed them all in a suicide attempt before informing the flight attendant. Then, at episode’s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
I saw this on Broadway, and recommend it to anyone who has seen, or loves, a lot of Broadway history, especially musicals. Harold Prince did a lot of amazing work as the producer of some of Stephen Sondheim’s best musicals, including Company and Follies and Sweeney Todd – but also did a lot of other amazing work, too, and tastes of them are here, enacted by a small but talented cadre of performers, each of whom gets a chance to shine. And, briefly, to play Prince himself. Check local
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
Hal Ashby directed this astounding 1979 film version of Jerzy Kosinki’s novella, a modern-day fable that took someone as great as Peter Sellers to embody the central role, and the slippery central concept. He plays a man upon whom everyone else projects what they wish, and interprets him accordingly. Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden and Richard Dysart co-star, and there’s a set piece, utilizing a Deodato instrumental, that is cinema perfection.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
17
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Chelsea Handler. Max Brooks. Rebecca Traister. Bill McKibben. Carl Bernstein. This is Bill Maher’s last show of the season, and it sure sounds like he intends to go out not with a whimper… but with a bang. The week’s top headlines, from tax bills to Al Franken, should provide all the fuel he needs for a big verbal bonfire.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
If you like This Is Us, you might take a fancy to the import series Love, Lies & Records...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Nov
16
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This period comedy series, co-created by Paul Reiser of Mad about You fame and David Steven Simon, tells the story of a 19-year-old who misinterprets a form letter from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as a job offer, and leaves Nebraska for Hollywood, where he ends up working on Tonight, circa 1972. Ian Nelson plays the Carson-adoring young man, and Jane Levy, who starred in Suburgatory, immediately becomes the show’s real comic and soulful center as Joy, an assistant