This 1953 movie, starring Alan Ladd in the title role, is one of the most effective and emotional Westerns ever made. Ladd plays a weary drifter, a former gunslinger who opts to befriend and protect a family of homesteaders against a ruthless band of encroaching ranchers. Jean Arthur is the woman in distress, Brandon De Wilde is her idolizing son, and Jack Palance, as hired gun Jack Wilson, plays one of the most menacing bad guys in Western history – even, or especially, when he’s sm

2017

Jul

THE NINETIES By David Bianculli

Tonight’s installment of The Nineties is called “The Comeback Kid,” and is all about the volatile presidency of Bill Clinton. It begins with ABC anchor Peter Jennings issuing an incredulous turn of events: “The impossibility of impeaching the President,” he tells his viewers, “must now be addressed. What follows is a tale that, in many ways, sounds astoundingly familiar, with a protracted and divisive battle over health care reform, the surfacing of a headline

2017

Jul

GAME OF THRONES By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: HBO did not provide tonight’s Season 7 premiere for preview. Some TV critics are upset about that, but not I. These days, the fewer hours of TV I have to watch to do my job, the better – because right now, it’s three steps from overwhelming (and I’m not saying from which direction). But I’ll be watching tonight, in real time, because I’m excited to see what comes next, as this mammoth fantasy series embarks on its final, two-part season,

2017

Jul

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN By David Bianculli

Last week, Twin Peaks ended with, among other things, FBI Agent Tammy Preston (played by Chrysta Bell, portraying one of the few successfully intriguing new characters added to this revival), interrogating William Hastings (Matthew Lillard), who babbles and sobs about an alternate universe while swearing he had nothing to do with his wife’s grisly death. My favorite part of Twin Peaks: The Return to date came when the medical examiner recounted, at length, the mysterious events surrounding

2017

Jul

REMEMBER ME By David Bianculli

MINISERIES PREMIERE: Don’t let this one slip by amid all the hubbub over other, more attention-grabbing Sunday shows. This three-part miniseries stars Michael Palin, in his first fully dramatic role in decades, playing an elderly Yorkshire man who is admitted to a nursing home – and almost instantly becomes the sole witness to a violent death. And the more we learn about him, and probe his seemingly sketchy memory, the more mysterious, and perhaps dangerous, he becomes. I’ve lo

2017

Jul

THE HISTORY OF COMEDY By David Bianculli

DOCUMENTARY SERIES RETURN: Tonight’s new installment of this series is called “One Nation, Under Comedy,” and is an impressively compiled overview of ethnic humor in standup comedy. TV situation comedies are touched upon, but only briefly – mostly, this is about the development of standup comedy, including the slow but sure progression, for example, from Dick Gregory to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to Eddie Murphy (pictured) to Chris Rock to Dave Chappelle. Other ethniciti

2017

Jul

THE STRAIN By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: Season 4 begins with both a time jump and a re-imagining, after the explosive events of the Season 3 finale. The villainous monsters are now firmly in charge, and now able to travel in daylight as well – but there’s still an underground effort to defeat and unseat them. But the old Master, in a new body, is even more dangerous than before, and the body-swapping doesn’t end there. To me, The Strain ended up straining its plot lines a bit too much, but if you&rsq

2017

Jul

NO LOVE FOR 'LOVE' AS EMMY NOMS ANNOUNCED By Bill Brioux

What?! No love for Love? That was my first reaction upon hearing the list of nominations for the 69th Annual Emmy Awards...

2017

Jul

WOMAN OF THE YEAR By David Bianculli

This 1942 romantic comedy is a great newspaper movie, a great relationship movie, and a great movie, period. It stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as reporters with very different specialties and interests – she’s an international public affairs reporter, and he’s a sportswriter – who feud, compete, and, of course, fall in love. When the movie was released, the hard-to-please critic Bosley Crowther raved about it, calling Woman of the Year “as warming as a Ma

2017

Jul

ORPHAN BLACK By David Bianculli

One of the clones most recently introduced on this series was Krystal, a caricature character – blonde, self-obsessed, hair-and-makeup-consumed – whom Tatiana Maslany somehow has made not only believable, but touching. Krystal has been absent for all but a few seconds this season, but tonight she resurfaces, in a story line that may provide a key piece of the puzzle for the other clone sisters.

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