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

 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
For sheer non-stop action, not even an Ultimate Fighting showdown can match the Tenderloin district of New York in the 1970s...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
SERIES SNEAK PREVIEW: I note the arrival of this new Fox sitcom because a) it’s the first new offering from the broadcast networks that’s an official part of the 2018-19 TV season, which used to be a huge deal but, frankly, just isn’t any more. It’s actually a sneak preview, slipped in after Fox’s Sunday football, and will begin its actual season later this month. And there was a b), right? And b), it’s aggressively average. Not bad, and with a few good lines
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
MINISERIES PREMIERE: Part 1 of 3. In this new three-part dramatic import from the U.K., Anya-Taylor Joy plays Nella Oortman, an 18-year-old woman who arrives in Amsterdam in 1686 to begin an arranged marriage with her rich husband, Johannes (Alex Hassell), whom she’s yet to meet. At first, she’s met by his sister instead: Marin (Romola Garai), who presents Nella with an odd welcoming gift. It’s a detailed scale-model replica of the home in which she’s about to reside &nda
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: The Season 2 premiere of The Deuce jumps forward four years, picking up the action around Times Square and its dreamers and hustlers in 1977. In one sense, it’s a continuation of the ongoing tease by series creators David Simon and George Pelacanos. Last year’s freshman season ended just as Deep Throat was hitting Manhattan movie houses and upending the porn film industry – and Season 2 returns with both that industry, and several of last year’s character
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: For its ninth and final season (which will unfurl in two separated chunks, as The Sopranos did), Shameless returns to the incendiary topics that it played with last season, including the “gay Jesus” movement. And this year, Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) dives deeper into Chicago politics, a swamp where he should feel extremely comfortable. There are so many excellent actors in this series – and so many great Gallaghers, including Emmy Rossum and Cameron Mon
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: I’m interested by the premise of this series, which has Jim Carrey returning to TV for the first time since 1984’s The Duck Factory, a short-lived NBC sitcom look at the Jay Ward animation shop that made “Rocky & Bullwinkle.” For this new series, Carrey once again frames his comedy around a children’s series – this time playing a beloved, long-running TV host patterned, somewhat, after Fred Rogers. Carrey’s Mr. Pickles is having an e
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
MGM is showing tonight, as a double feature, two of the strangest, most inventive vampire movies ever made – and both of these movies reward diehard film fans, who are aware that the vampire, in cinema lore, goes back to German director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic, Nosferatu. That movie was based, in large part, on the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, a decade before Hollywood cast Bela Lugosi as the long-toothed count. In Nosferatu, Max Schrek played the mysterious, ratlike Graf Orl
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
Okay, John Oliver, take it away. I can’t explain this latest week of headlines. Perhaps you can…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
The impromptu surprise appearances by Paul McCartney are starting to pile up... this one on the occasion of the release of his new album “Egypt Station,” reports had the show not exactly public, held behind blackout curtains for invited guests. So, the rest of us would have only heard McCartney on our way to Yonkers unless we dialed it up live on YouTube...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Sep
9
 
 
This has been a big year for Fred Rogers, who’s been extolled in a first-rate documentary film and is now reprised in fragile form via Jim Carrey as Mr. Pickles...