
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."
-
The Bob's Burger's Movie, Jordan Peele's Nope, and Fire Island with Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster are all on our critics' lists.
-
Actor Ray Liotta, who rocketed to film stardom in Goodfellas, has died in his sleep at a hotel in the Dominican Republic where he was filming a movie. He was 67.
-
Three Decades after the original Top Gun, Tom Cruise returns to lead a fresh squadron of Navy fighter pilots in Top Gun: Maverick.
-
Maggie Smith's dowager countess acquires a villa in the South of France, so the Downton household goes on a field trip in Downton Abbey: A New Era.
-
A college student in 1960s France encounters difficulties in seeking an abortion that feel very of-this-moment in Audrey Diwan's timely drama Happening.
-
After unleashing all kinds of trouble in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel's Doctor Strange will try to clean up the mess in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
-
A look at how Hollywood has depicted authoritarians, from Duck Soup to The Last King of Scotland.
-
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Nicholas Cage plays a movie star named Nic Cage in the adventure comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
-
The legend that Shakespeare based Hamlet on has inspired another work: Robert Eggers' violent new film, The Northman.
-
An ailing biochemist aims to cure himself of a debilitating illness, but ends up infecting himself with vampirism in the Marvel movie Morbius.