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

 
 
2019
Aug
30
 
 
You’d think someone smart enough to become a lawyer would be smart enough to realize it’s rarely a good idea to go to the Mob for money to bail yourself or your friends and family out of a tight spot...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
29
 
 
The real story of the Reelz documentary series The Real Story of… is this: This program takes a popular movie based on a fact-based event or actual person, and compares what happened in the movie to what happened in real life. Tonight, it presents a new episode devoted to Ben Affleck’s 2012 movie ARGO, about the top-secret plan to rescue a group of hostages during the 1979 Iran takeover of the U.S. Embassy. I can tell you, without seeing this new Real Story
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
28
 
 
As Labor Day approaches and the summer is about to end, many people dive into the ocean, or head to the beach or the shore, for one more waterfront experience. Me, I head to the TV, for one more deep dive into Steven Spielberg’s masterful 1975 movie Jaws. And right on time, here it comes, on AMC. I’m gonna need a bigger TV…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
28
 
 
Tonight’s episode is titled “July 8, 1995.” But I don’t know why. Presumably, it’s a presentation of a faux program from that date – but with this freewheeling program, who knows? Not I.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
27
 
 
The intriguingly titled Age Before Beauty plays like a British variation on The Affair...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
27
 
 
Tuesday nights on TV are notably, depressingly slow this summer, and virtually the only diversionary solace to be found is in a telecast of an old movie or two. So here’s one, from 1971: Gene Wilder, at his bewitchingly edgy best, playing a factory owner who exploits workers, looks down on his customers, and hates children. Or does he? Roald Dahl, the same twisted mind that gave us James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, and the “Man from the South” episode of Al
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
27
 
 
After teaming for Stripes in 1981, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray reteamed, three years later, for this comedy blockbuster, which presented one absolutely unforgettable image after another. One, for example, would be the demon-possessed Sigourney Weaver. Another would be the Manhattan-terrorizing giant marshmallow man. On such an otherwise uneventful night for TV, what you gonna watch?
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
26
 
 
Mary Astor is today’s “Summer Under the Stars” saluted thespian, and TCM has saved for prime time a movie classic that could just as well, and as proudly, be presented on days devoted to Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. John Huston’s 1941 film noir classic presents Bogart as world-weary gumshoe Sam Spade. Bogart is perfect, Astor is a fine femme fatale, and Greenstreet and Lorre are deliciously entertaining villains – though
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
26
 
 
Now that we’re a few hours into Infamy, the new installment of AMC’s The Terror, I’ve finally pinpointed why I’m ultimately dissatisfied with this story of a vengeful Japanese spirit that haunts a U.S. internment camp of Japanese-Americans at the start of WWII. The dramatic story of the outrageously unfair internment of American citizens of Japanese descent is told so well that the supernatural aspects of Infamy – the female ghost, the
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Aug
26
 
 
Our Boys, on the other hand, is getting even stronger as it goes along, because it’s giving equal time to both sides, and both perspectives, in retelling the tale of a series of kidnapping and murders of young men in and around the West Bank. First, young Israeli hitchhikers were abducted, then killed, while wending their way home – and then, apparently in retaliation, another violent group began targeting and abducting young Palestinians. Our Boys is told not only fro