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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Boys State documentary explores how a group of Texas teens participated in the American Legion program to learn about democracy by organizing political parties and running a mock government.
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Radioactive seems like a straightforward biopic of physicist Marie Curie at first. But it becomes more complicated as the director uses flash-forwards to illustrate the effects of Curie's discoveries.
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A movie critic shares his experience of returning back to a movie theater for the first time after two months of the pandemic-forced abstinence.
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Memorial Day usually means the start of Hollywood's blockbuster season — except this summer is different. But if movie theaters do reopen soon, Hollywood has few premiers to revive the industry.
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In The Trip to Greece, Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden undertake their fourth comic and culinary journey — this one actually modeled after Homer's Odyssey.
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Some states are allowing movie theaters to reopen, but will they? Big theater chains say no, so it's up to independent theater owners who are "proceeding with an abundance of caution."
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In this time of fear and quarantining, critic Bob Mondello offers three classic movies worth revisiting — or watching for the first time.
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A pregnant teenager travels to New York City to obtain an abortion in Eliza Hittman's drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
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After director Ingmar Bergman helped launch von Sydow's career, the imposing Swedish star went on to play Jesus, a Bond villain, an elderly exorcist and scores of other roles.
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Director Kelly Reichardt set her latest western drama in Oregon in the 1820s. It's the story of two drifters who come up with a unique money-making scheme in the midst of a gold rush.