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

 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Part 8 of 8. This Ken Burns and company series ends its repeat run with an episode devoted to jazz hands. Just kidding. It’s really about modern jazz, and one of the key figures – still alive and playing, as well as talking, at the time this series was produced – in Dave Brubeck, whose “Take Five” and other recordings in the 1950s allowed jazz to slide into the relative mainstream. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Billy Crudup stars as a not-so-mad professor in this fact-based 2015 movie, about the short-lived but still infamous 1971 Stanford University social-behavior experiment in which students were assigned roles as either prisoners or guards – and, in both cases, ordered to do things that were likely to go against their normal nature and sense of ethics and morality.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
14
 
 
Tonight’s guest host and musical guest are the same: Drake. And without his beard, which apparently is a big deal on the Internet.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
13
 
 
Part 8. Tonight ‘s repeat episode of Jazz has the postwar blues – and in the decade after WWII, the period covered in tonight’s installment, the key word is bebop. So bethere, or besquare. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
13
 
 
This 1999 movie is being shown tonight on the new Viceland network, and is televised rarely enough these days to warrant a mention. John Cusack stars as a puppeteer who accidentally stumbles upon a portal leading, somehow, to John Malkovich’s brain – which he then decides to manipulate for his own benefit. And, in this audaciously weird fantasy comedy, he’s not alone – and in making this movie, the real John Malkovich is very much in on the joke.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
13
 
 
This is the penultimate episode of this series, and given the high level of violence in any random installment of Banshee, this week and next, it’s reasonable to expect the worst. Last week’s episode ended with Eliza Dushku, as the new investigator in town, captured and strung up by the serial killer everyone is after. With only one week to go until Banshee itself is history, will she survive? Given the time frame of this Cinemax series, all bets definitely are off…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
13
 
 
Don’t miss this one: On this new edition, Maher’s guests include former Sen. Bob Graham and filmmaker Michael Moore.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
12
 
 

Warning: Contains spoilers from previously aired episodes of Scandal. One of the big questions hovering over Thursday night’s season finale of Scandal is whether the ABC show has made the right bet on its own political lineup.

 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
12
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Christine Baranski is gone from The Good Wife, now that that series has ended on CBS, but she’s not through with the network quite yet. Tonight she returns, yet again, as Leonard’s tightly wound, highly critical mother, in a Big Bang Theory season finale that also makes room for other Emmy-winning guest stars portraying parents. Laurie Metcalf makes another appearance as Sheldon’s religious mom, and Judd Hirsch makes his first appearance – but most probably
 
 
 
  
 
 
2016
May
12
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Was this the year that actual political events in presidential politics out-outrageousnessed the fevered imagination of Shonda Rhimes and her Scandal crew? So far, it seems so – but Scandal has tonight’s season finale to reclaim the crown. Kerry Washington stars. For a full review, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower.