Here comes another TCM double feature featuring the same actor, and this one really shows the subject’s range. From 1967, it’s The Graduate, in which Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin, drives a spiffy sports car through a particularly bumpy stretch of his life, just after college graduation. He has an affair with the wife of a friend of his father, then becomes attracted to their daughter. What to watch for, in this relentlessly clever film directed by Mike Nichols, with music by

2020

Feb

ANNA By David Bianculli

Luc Besson, writer and director of 1990’s La Femme Nikita, wrote and directed this 2019 movie, an almost next-generation update with a similar plot. Sasha Luss plays the title role, a beautiful Russian woman who is recruited as a superspy and deadly assassin. Some of the story points are so similar – an imperious female trainer (this time Helen Mirren) running the would-be killer through their paces, and an assigned hit intentionally botched to test her mettle under fire &n

2020

Feb

SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET By David Bianculli

If you’ve watched this series from the start, and seen all its promos, you’ve probably seen one image dozens of times: an elephant on its hind legs, stretching with its trunk to reach and pull down some leaves from the top of a tall tree. Well, this week’s episode is devoted to Africa, and that elephant is bound to appear tonight.

2020

Feb

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE By David Bianculli

This week’s new episode features former SNL writer John Mulaney returning, once again, as host – and if his previous appearances are any indication, he’ll arrive with a particularly funny monolog. And tonight’s musical guest is worth anticipating, too: It’s former Talking Heads front man David Byrne.

2020

Feb

LINCOLN RHYME: HUNT FOR THE BONE COLLECTOR By David Bianculli

At the climax of last week’s episode, The Bone Collector’s wife phoned him and demanded he come home immediately. She had found his secret stash of Polaroids of his victims – but believed, much to her relief, his false claims of innocence and ignorance. Until, that is, she noticed that one of her female friends, who had recently visited, was in one of the photographs. Promos for tonight’s episode show her bound and gagged in the basement, suggesting the Bone Collecto

2020

Feb

NATALIE WOOD DOUBLE FEATURE By David Bianculli

TCM’s deliriously entertaining double features, showing two films featuring the same performer, continue tonight – but where usually there has been a span of decades between the movies chosen, tonight there’s only a six-year gap. Both films co-star Natalie Wood, beginning at 8 p.m. ET with 1955’s Rebel without a Cause. Then, at 10 p.m. ET, comes 1961’s Splendor in the Grass (pictured). In both, she stars opposite very magnetic and brooding y

2020

Feb

ROCKETMAN By David Bianculli

Taron Egerton, who played Eggsy in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, stars as Elton John in this very authorized 2019 film treatment (the real Elton John is an executive producer, and his husband, David Furnish, is a producer). John’s musical partner, Bernie Taupin, is played by Jamie Bell, but Taupin is not a credited producer on Rocketman. The dramatic biography’s screenplay is written by Lee Hall, who doubtlessly was approved by Elton John because Hall had written t

2020

Feb

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER By David Bianculli

This week’s stock market black-diamond downhill slide, the Trump administration’s slow-motion reaction to the threat of a pandemic, last Tuesday’s yell-fest of a Democratic primary debate, and tomorrow’s high-stakes South Carolina Democratic primary – it’s all up for grabs in tonight’s live Real Time.

2020

Feb

TAXI DRIVER By David Bianculli

I recommend this movie a lot – usually, every time it pops up unedited on TV – and this is no exception. Martin Scorsese’s 1976 movie is a masterpiece of filmmaking, and Robert De Niro gives a performance as singular, and defining, as Marlon Brando’s in A Streetcar Named Desire a generation before. And pay particular attention, this time around, to some of the supporting players usually overlooked when people discuss Taxi Driver – Albert Brooks,

Posts 1-10 of 137 1 2 3 4 5

New From TVWW

PBS' 'Frontline’ Examines Pension Promises and — Spoiler Alert — Finds the Math Doesn’t Add Up

The Decadence of ‘Versailles’ Comes to Ovation

Prescribing Mamie Gummer in 'Emily Owens, M.D.'

Looking for a Free Ride? HBO Can Deliver

'Pass the Biscuits' Part of the Hatfield-McCoy Pop-Culture Legacy

Dispatches From TVWW

'Extinction: The Facts' is a Sobering Call to Action

How 'Mayans' Has Been Influenced by the Show's Creator Elgin James

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Take on Ernest Hemingway, the Man and the Myth

In the Final Season, Sutton Foster's Liza is Now the Genuine Version of Her 'Younger' Self

Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' Returns with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Boston Corruption