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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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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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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Keanu Reeves' reluctant assassin is a little less reluctant in his latest outing, John Wick Chapter 4.
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Before digital projectors in movie theaters, projectionists had to quickly move from one film reel to the next. NPR looks at what has changed since the days of film in our series, "Backstage Pass."
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Steven Spielberg says he's been hiding from his own story since he was 17. The Fabelmans is a lightly fictionalized version of his life, without raptors, sharks, or historical figures to hide behind. -
Hollywood generally takes a breather in January and February, but here's a selective peek at the laughs, tears and action Hollywood has in store before Memorial Day.
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Cuarenta años después de la caída de la dictadura militar argentina que torturó y asesinó a miles de civiles, se muestra una grabación del juicio de los militares responsables por primera vez.
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Forty years after the fall of an Argentine military dictatorship that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, a video record of its trial will be shown to the public for the first time.
