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
Jun
7
 
 
The two-day Love, American Style marathon continues on Decades today, and there are a pair of installments of this comedy anthology series that deserve special mention. At 4 p.m. ET, there’s an episode featuring Burt Reynolds and Elizabeth Ashley, just before he became a cinematic superstar. And at 6 p.m. ET, there’s the 1972 episode “Love and the Happy Days,” which was producer Garry Marshall’s pilot for Happy Days, which helped push also-ran AB
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
I’m familiar with native Tuvan throat singing from Russia, thanks to the brilliant Ondar CD Back Tuva Future. But this film, a Sundance Film Festival entry presented in this virtual We Are One: Global Film Festival lineup and website, looks at Throat Singing in Kangirsuk – which I had to look up. Kangirsuk, it turns out, isn’t in Russia. It’s in Canada: an Inuit village in northern Nunavik in Quebec. Don’t arrive late, or blink: This documentary
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
Here’s another We Are One: Global Film Festival premiere. This one is longer: a full-length documentary about volleyball gold medalist “Jenny” Lang Ping, the only person in her sport to win Olympic gold as both a player and a coach. The Iron Hammer is of special interest, at least to Twin Peaks fans, because it marks the directorial debut of Joan Chen, who played Josie Packard on that groundbreaking David Lynch series.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
MINISERIES PREMIERE: Part 2. I question the wisdom of stretching this three-part miniseries, which cumulatively is the length of a three-hour movie, into as many weekly installments. But that’s only because it’s so good, and builds such momentum, that the wait between episodes seems way too long. Part 1 ended last Sunday with Charles Ingram, played by Matthew Macfayden from Succession, finally getting the chance to sit in the hot seat, opposite Michael Sheen as Chris Tarran
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Part 2 of 2. I really, really enjoyed the first part of this documentary, which is all about the music and culture emerging from a particular Los Angeles suburb. Stephen Stills and Peter Tork were roommates. The Mamas and the Papas, as well as Crosby, Stills and Nash, teamed up and hung out here. Last week, we learned how Alice Cooper got his big break auditioning in the Laurel Canyon basement studio of Frank Zappa, and toured the hilltop suburban stretch where Turtles and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
I keep writing, every week, that this miniseries is one of the most depressing TV dramas I’ve ever seen – and I keep watching, because it’s so well-acted, and because its plot is so deliberate and quietly intense. Last week’s episode was painful in its dramatic revelations, and in what it threw at its main characters. As psychically and physically scarred twin brothers Dominick and Thomas, Mark Ruffalo has been phenomenal – and so, last week, was Philip Ettinger (pi
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
The central couple of this series, Chuck and Wendy Rhoades, have been estranged this season, and last week they began exploring significant new alliances. Chuck, played by Paul Giamatti, has taken up with a professor played by Julianna Margulies. Wendy, played by Maggie Siff, has warmed up to an artist played by Frank Grillo. And professionally, while Wendy also has flirted with the idea of connecting with her boss (played by Damian Lewis), she’s negotiated an even more high-stakes and pot
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
Last week, the detectives solved the murder case by getting a confession, from one suspect in custody, of all the unsolved murders that have been bedeviling the LAPD. The police squad celebrated, even though the detectives knew they had talked the suspect into a false confession (in what was a very strong tour de force performance by Nathan Lane). And speaking of bedeviling… there’s a devil, or at least a demon, at the heart of tonight’s mayhem as well. And all of th
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
7
 
 
There are weeks where I really need John Oliver to check in, to help me not only laugh at the week just ended, but to find a way to laugh at any of it. This has been one of those weeks, Actually, it feels like it’s been two…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
6
 
 
From 1969 to 1974, ABC presented a relative rarity on TV: a prime-time comedy anthology series. Love, American Style had no fixed cast, and presented anywhere from a single story to a handful of shorter vignettes within each week’s program. But if you want a show that preserves, in televised amber, a perfect representative slice of the period in which it was made, Love, American Style is it. If you want to see how the free-love Sixties flowed into the less altruistic Se