
Bob Mondello
Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.
For more than three decades, Mondello has reviewed movies and covered the arts for NPR, seeing at least 300 films annually, then sharing critiques and commentaries about the most intriguing on NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered. In 2005, he conceived and co-produced NPR's eight-part series "American Stages," exploring the history, reach, and accomplishments of the regional theater movement.
Mondello has also written about the arts for USA Today, The Washington Post, Preservation Magazine, and other publications, and has appeared as an arts commentator on commercial and public television stations. He spent 25 years reviewing live theater for Washington City Paper, DC's leading alternative weekly, and to this day, he remains enamored of the stage.
Before becoming a professional critic, Mondello learned the ins and outs of the film industry by heading the public relations department for a chain of movie theaters, and he reveled in film history as advertising director for an independent repertory theater.
Asked what NPR pieces he's proudest of, he points to an April Fool's prank in which he invented a remake of Citizen Kane, commentaries on silent films — a bit of a trick on radio — and cultural features he's produced from Argentina, where he and his husband have a second home.
An avid traveler, Mondello even spends his vacations watching movies and plays in other countries. "I see as many movies in a year," he says, "as most people see in a lifetime."
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Studios raced to finish summer attractions ahead of the writers strike. So we're back with a great big, filterable guide of what to watch — and where to find it — as the days get hotter and longer.
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Here's a selective look ahead at the summer's potential blockbusters, awards contenders and crowd-pleasers.
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Ariel and her pals have been given a live-action makeover in The Little Mermaid.
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The coming-of-age drama Stay Awake takes its title from the efforts of two teens to get their mother safely to the hospital after an accidental overdose of prescription pills.
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Penelope Cruz is a vibrant, if troubled, mom in L'Immensita, Emanuele Crialese's largely autobiographical portrait of an Italian family in the 1970s.
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Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy concludes with the origin story of the shortest Guardian — Rocket (don't call him a raccoon).
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An American soldier struggles to help an Afghani interpreter who saved his life in Guy Ritchie's The Covenant.
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Ben Affleck directs the story of how a small athletic shoe maker cracked the big time in 1984 by introducing a shoe for an untested rookie named Michael Jordan.
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Banned in Pakistan, the film Joyland chronicles a young married man's travails after he gets a job as a backup dancer in a revue featuring a trans performer.
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A free-spirited mom, fresh from prison, kidnaps her 6-year-old from foster care, determined that her family will not be separated again in the drama A Thousand and One.