Speaking of Donkey Kong, Monkey Kong, and King Kong – with the new Kong: Skull Island reviving the legend, and movie franchise, of King Kong, here comes a TCM replay of the 1933 original. Its special effects are all over the place, from spectacular for their time to cheesy at any time, and the titular giant ape changes in size and shape more than Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. But if you remember that this King Kong adventures originally arrived in movie theaters only six years after the a

2017

Mar

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS By David Bianculli

This 1956 movie, presented right after the Joe McCarthy Communist witch hunts, and at a time when America still was terrified of being infiltrated by Russian spies and sympathizers (oh, remember what a quaint era that was?), remains one of the best movies about properly motivated paranoia ever made. (For others, see All the President’s Men, The Parallax View, The Thing, and Alien, to name a few.) Don Siegel, who eventually directed Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, directs this still-scary st

2017

Mar

FOX'S ‘SHOTS FIRED’ IS THE LATEST BROADCAST NETWORK DRAMA AIMING TO BE SOCIALLY RELEVANT By Ed Bark

The broadcast networks -- well, at least two of them -- lately have been flexing their social consciences. Not that this is a profitable enterprise...

2017

Mar

FOX HAS HIT THE TARGET WITH ‘SHOTS FIRED’ By David Hinckley

Broadcast television has another strong, compelling and troubling entry in the limited-series game with Fox’s Shots Fired...

2017

Mar

EVERYONE’S FANNING THE FIRE WHEN ‘EMPIRE’ RETURNS By David Hinckley

About the only way things could have gotten hotter on Fox’s Empire would be if they set the whole thing on fire...

2017

Mar

SHOTS FIRED By David Bianculli

MINISERIES PREMIERE: The sudden recent burst of socially relevant limited dramas, begun with ABC’s When We Rise and the Season 3 return of American Crime, continues with this new 10-part Fox drama, built around two cases of civilian shootings of teenagers by police officers. The racial components of the cases are polarized and polarizing: a white youth shot by a black cop, and a black youth shot by one or more white cops. For full reviews, see Ed Bark’s Uncle Barky’s Bytes and

2017

Mar

EMPIRE By David Bianculli

MIDSEASON RETURN: Now that Star has ended its freshman season, Empire returns for a new round of high-octane drama, the second half of Season 3 – and just watching the network promo, featuring Taraji P. Henson’s Cookie walking in slow motion with the fierceness of a lioness on the prowl, carrying a baseball bat like Beyoncé in her Lemonade video, is enough to get you to press “Record” for this midseason opener. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the

2017

Mar

DESIGNATED SURVIVOR By David Bianculli

In this week’s episode, while the White House is in crisis mode, what’s left of the new administration and its supporters focuses less on the problems at hand than on the sources of potentially damaging press leaks. Isn’t it great to watch prime-time broadcast scripted television just to get away from it all?

2017

Mar

LEGION By David Bianculli

This is the penultimate episode of Season 1 of Legion. At this point, I can’t understand, much less explain, exactly what’s going on – but I know that, each episode, things get not only more complicated, but even more interesting…

2017

Mar

FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE By David Bianculli

These days, watching Samantha Bee begin her show is like watching Reggie Jackson stroll up to home plate during his glory days with the New York Yankees. It seems like each week of headlines gives her some fat new pitches at which to swing – and lately, she’s really been hitting them out of the park.

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