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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Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor star in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, a romantic, tennis-centered screwball dramedy.
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A gently poetic coming-of-age story, We Grown Now chronicles an adolescent friendship in Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project in the early 1990s.
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Alex Garland's dystopian thriller Civil War depicts a current-day, less-than-united states of America in which journalists are scrambling to get to the White House before rebel factions do.
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Dev Patel's feature directing debut Monkey Man, and what may be Ken Loach's swan song, The Old Oak, offer two views of people doing the right thing in combatting hatred and corruption.
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The victim of a gay-bashing encounters his attacker months later, and embarks on a dangerous game in the revenge thriller Femme.
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The Motion Picture Academy hopes that more popular films, an earlier showtime, and increased diversity among nominees will lead to higher viewership.
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Kristen Stewart stars in a lesbian thriller/romance. The genre-shredding film takes place in rural New Mexico in 1989.
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The first film in an animated Spider-Verse trilogy won an Oscar in 2018. The latest installment, Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, will be a strong contender to repeat that accomplishment.
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Mel Brooks' satirical Western got mixed reviews when it opened in February 1974, but it became the year's biggest box office hit.
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Dune: Part Two picks up Frank Herbert's epic Dune saga in mid-rebellion, with Timothee Chalamet's Paul Atreides finally getting to ride a giant sandworm and taste the Water of Life.