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

 
 
2014
Aug
6
 
 
It’s Paul Muni night (and day) on TCM, and the evening part of the tribute begins with one of his most important starring roles. Made in 1932, it told the based-on-fact story of a man who was wrongly imprisoned, and, at the time the movie was released, still on the run from authorities, like a true-life Richard Kimble. And the reaction to this film, and Muni’s performance, was so potent that, as happened decades later with the subject of the sympathetic biopic Hurricane, its protagon
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
6
 
 
The plot continues to thicken, almost to gumbo level, as things happen on all sorts of fronts. One of them: Christine contacts her estranged family for help, once her investigation results not only in some new information, but some unexpected dangers.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
6
 
 
Paul Muni plays a ruthless gangster named Tony in this 1932 Howard Hawks mobster movie – but it’s pretty obvious he was playing Al Capone, or a very close approximation thereof. (The real Capone reportedly enjoyed this movie enough to own his own copy – and that was about 45 years before home video.) The cult classic of the same name, starring Al Pacino in 1983, follows the same brutal and tragic trajectory – but watch this one for Ann Dvorak as his sister Poppy, and Geor
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
6
 
 
Josh Malina from Sports Night, among many other things, shows up tonight as one of the doctors guiding Molly (Halle Berry) through her pregnancy. If that’s what it is…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
6
 
 
The narrative voice can be its own form of flogging throughout Episode 1 of Starz’s Outlander. By Episode 2, also sent for review, the action has picked up while all that off-camera droning has largely stifled itself...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
5
 
 
Actually, the title is only 25 percent accurate, because the Country Music Association Music Festival (that title comes, surely, from Mad magazine's Department of Redundancy Department) actually unfolded over four days, back in June. But there are indeed some high-energy, rocking performances on tap here, including a duet featuring Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood that’s a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and a little bit hot pants.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
5
 
 
Part 2 of 2. I love how thoughtful and perceptive Ken Burns’ biography of Sam Clemens and his literary alter ego is, and how it takes its time. Part 1 ended with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so we still have two hours for the rest of Clemens’ eventful life – and the older he gets, the more his story veers towards the tragic side. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
5
 
 
All day and all night, it’s Barbra Stanwyck’s day on TCM. And though she’s showcased in plenty of movies familiar and unfamiliar, comedic and dramatic, the network has saved one of the most enjoyable Stanwyck roles to open its prime-time roster. In this 1941 Howard Hawks film, Gary Cooper plays a professor of lexicography out to catalog the latest examples of popular slang – and Stanwyck dazzles him, and his colleagues, as flashy nightclub singer Sugarpuss O’Shea, w
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
5
 
 
This new edition is devoted to Hollywood, and one of its segments is on the making of Citizen Kane – featuring John Lithgow, who’s playing King Lear in Shakespeare at the Park right now in New York, as media baron William Randolph Hearst (how’s that for an eclectic resume), and Jack Black as Welles, who lampooned Hearst so devilishly in his classic film. By the way: the brief preview segment of this episode didn’t reveal the greatest secret about Citizen Kane (think &ldqu
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Aug
5
 
 
In this week’s episode of Tyrant, the threat of retaliatory violence continues to escalate (what a stretch, in a drama set in the Middle East). After Jamal targets Sheik Rashid with an assassination attempt, word arrives that Rashid may somehow survive the brutal attack. In other words, I guess, he may be able to Sheik it off…