Mark Jenkins
Mark Jenkins reviews movies for NPR.org, as well as for , 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 -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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Shot on vintage, lo-fi video cameras, this talky, didactic film finds a bickering couple beginning to question themselves once they start to question a tale told by an older black man.
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The slaying of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago cop has been widely reported but Richard Rowley's documentary lays out the CPD's cover-up, and its ultimate collapse, in stark detail.
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Director Denys Arcand continues a series about the discontents of Montreal intellectuals with The Fall Of The American Empire.While it elides some complications, its range of references feels fresh.
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Joanna Hogg's tale of a London film student who falls for a manipulative older man is at war with itself: Hogg's "confessional memoir draws you in, while her clinical style pushes you away."
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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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The legendary Chinese director Zhang Yimou presents a sweeping quasi-historical tale that allows him to return to the visual and narrative themes for which he is known.
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Writer/director Bi Gan's second feature is a mood piece about a man who returns to his hometown to search for a lost love. The net effect is that of a "stately waltz of movement and illumination."
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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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Writer-director Jia Zhangke returns to many of his classic themes, actors and locations — this time with a new, slightly absurdist touch to reflect China's profound transformation.
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A French dance troupe drinks sangria spiked with LSD and descends into carnal violence in a film that turns into "just another Noé freakout, familiar in tone and stylistic tics."