Bob Mondello

Bob Mondello appears in the following:

A dying father looks for the perfect family to adopt his son in 'Nowhere Special'

Friday, April 26, 2024

A young single dad is on a mission in the film Nowhere Special. With a terminal illness and no family to turn to, he's searching for the perfect adoptive family for his four-year-old son.

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Three tennis players can't seem to quit each other in 'Challengers'

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor star in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, a romantic, tennis-centered screwball dramedy.

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'We Grown Now' imbues hope in a coming-of-age story in a Chicago housing project

Thursday, April 18, 2024

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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Dystopian film 'Civil War' follows journalists covering a second American civil war

Friday, April 12, 2024

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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Unlikely heroes stand up to corruption in 'The Old Oak' and 'Monkey Man'

Friday, April 05, 2024

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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British thriller 'Femme' explores revenge after a homophobic attack

Thursday, March 21, 2024

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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Kristen Stewart stars in neon-lit film-noir 'Love Lies Bleeding'

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Kristen Stewart stars in a lesbian thriller/romance. The genre-shredding film takes place in rural New Mexico in 1989.

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'Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse' may just win the series another Oscar

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

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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'Dune: Part Two' takes the first film's stunning visuals to a new level

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

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.

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Revisiting 'The Holdovers,' which is up for an Oscar along with actor Paul Giamatti

Monday, February 26, 2024

Paul Giamatti plays a 1970s prep-school teacher reluctantly supervising students with nowhere to go for the Christmas holidays in Alexander Payne's dramedy, The Holdovers.

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First-time filmmaker Cord Jefferson's 'American Fiction' is both moving and hilarious

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Jeffrey Wright plays a frustrated author who writes an preposterously stereotypical "Black" book as a joke, only to have it become a bestseller in the comedy American Fiction.

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'Bob Marley: One Love' is a heartfelt biopic about the celebrated reggae musician

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The biopic Bob Marley: One Love stars Kingsley Ben Adir as the Jamaican singer/songwriter who became the world's most celebrated reggae musician.

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'The Teachers' Lounge' is a surprising look at a set of troubled faculty and students

Thursday, February 01, 2024

"The Teachers' Lounge", Germany's Oscar nominee for Best International Feature, looks at tensions in a middle school while implicating wider social forces.

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Frontrunners and snubs: A breakdown of the Oscar nominations

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

With nominations for the Academy Awards finally announced, NPR critics Bob Mondello and Linda Holmes discuss the frontrunners, favorites and snubs among the contenders.

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Oscar nominations: 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' are expected to figure prominently

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills. Awards season has already provided some guidance about the favorites.

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As 2023's strikes catch up with Hollywood, box office revenue is expected to drop

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

After three consecutive years of box office gains, the film industry expects revenues to be sharply down in 2024. The reason: aftereffects of the strikes by writers and actors.

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The year that broke the movie mold

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

Superhero fatigue, Barbenheimer, Taylor Swift — 2023 was a year when Hollywood's rulebook flew out the window.

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NPR film critic Bob Mondello's top films of 2023

Friday, December 29, 2023

Bob Mondello's 10-Best list always runneth over, and despite writers' and actors' strikes, this year is no exception. Here are the films he was most excited about in 2023.

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Review: Andrew Haigh's 'All of Us Strangers' is a haunting meditation on connection

Thursday, December 21, 2023

A haunting meditation on loneliness wrapped in a supernatural coming-of-age tale, Andrew Haigh's drama All of Us Strangers stars Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy.

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The new 'Wonka' film manages to not be too sweet

Friday, December 15, 2023

Bob Mondello shares his thoughts on Timothee Chalamet's rendition of a young Willy Wonka in the new prequel to the Roald Dahl film classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

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