Mark Jenkins
Mark Jenkins reviews movies for NPR.org, as well as for reeldc.com, which covers the Washington, D.C., film scene with an emphasis on art, foreign and repertory cinema.
Jenkins spent most of his career in the industry once known as newspapers, working as an editor, writer, art director, graphic artist and circulation director, among other things, for various papers that are now dead or close to it.
He covers popular and semi-popular music for The Washington Post, Blurt, Time Out New York, and the newsmagazine show Metro Connection, which airs on member station WAMU-FM.
Jenkins is co-author, with Mark Andersen, of Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital. At one time or another, he has written about music for Rolling Stone, Slate, and NPR's All Things Considered, among other outlets.
He has also written about architecture and urbanism for various publications, and is a writer and consulting editor for the Time Out travel guide to Washington. He lives in Washington.
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A couple leaves L.A. to start a farm from scratch, without knowing what they're in for, in this crowd-pleasing documentary that proves "amiable and ultimately moving."
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There's plenty of 'Downton Abbey' DNA in this tale of prim Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) who shepherds young Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) to NYC; there's also a leaden script and thin characters.
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Reinaldo Marcus Green's exquisite drama examines, from three perspectives, the aftermath of the slaying of an unarmed black man; the film offers "neither unalloyed despair nor implausible hope."
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Filmmaker Robert Greene combines documentary and theatrical performance to tell the tale of a deadly mass deportation of copper miners in 1917.
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In this CGI-driven adaptation of Beatrix Potter's children's tale, violent slapstick and obnoxious behavior replace the gentle whimsy of the books.
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Greg Barker's film favors candid emotional moments over a meaningful examination of how key policy initiatives were shaped in the closing months of the Obama presidency.
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Angela Robinson's biopic of the colorful sexual triad behind the comic-book character is sweet, but so concerned with rendering their kinkiness as bold and important that it forgets to have fun.
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The pleasures of this imagined conversation between two real-life Northern Ireland political enemies, set in the run-up to 2006 St. Andrews Agreement, are more political/philosophical than dramatic.
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A story of a fading cowboy-movie star and the younger woman who may lift his spirits would logically star Sam Elliott. And the ruefully comic drama The Hero does.
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A binge-drinking American woman unwittingly controls a monster that's destroying Seoul in this tone-deaf comedy; the film's lumbering attempts to subvert our rom-com expectations fall flat.