Linda Holmes

Our pal Chris Klimek has a fine review of the film The Equalizer, in which Denzel Washington plays a man who gets revenge on all manner of bad guys, and maybe annoying people, and maybe just other people? Anyway, it seems inevitable that if the movie comes back, ...

When we learned that our treasured friends Barrie Hardymon and Margaret "Hulahoop" Willison (thus named for her actual middle initial, H, as well as her whimsical and irresistible delightfulness) were both going to be in town when we taped this episode, there was only one thing to do: fire Stephen.

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Writer Kara Brown recently reacted to an L.A. Times story about cornrows with one simple thought: "Friends, readers, ladyfolk, I believe we are being trolled."

She was referring not just to the cornrows piece — which went on and on about cornrows without mentioning a single black woman, ...

Bill Simmons, the ESPN commentator whose Twitter bio reads in part "Grantland boss + columnist, @30for30 co-creator, NBA Countdown co-host, BS Report host," will not be doing most of those jobs for three weeks after using the last of them — host of the podcast The BS Report — ...

Steve Almond's blistering book Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto is exactly what it advertises itself to be: an exasperated, frustrated, wide-ranging argument that the time has come to abandon football — particularly but not exclusively the NFL — as a sport built on violence, racism, economic exploitation of poor ...

"When brothers start getting a little money, stuff starts getting a little weird."

That's one of the opening lines of the pilot of ABC's Black-ish, which follows the Johnson family, led by ad executive Andre (Anthony Anderson, whose line that is) and doctor Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), who live with ...

In the wake of the premiere of Fox's Red Band Society, there's been lots of talk — not unreasonably — about how it's just The Fault In Our Stars crossed with Glee, which it sort of is, and about how it's just a variation on what I've heard called "sick ...

The problem with being slow on the draw with your fall TV picks is that there aren't so many recommend-able new shows that you can make an entire B-team out of them. Yesterday's post from NPR's Eric Deggans named most of the shows I would have named on ...

I saw Shonda Rhimes at a panel presentation at the Television Critics Association press tour this summer where she helped introduce How to Get Away with Murder, the new ABC drama she helps produce but did not create. I found her pleasantly (and a little amusingly) transparent in not loving ...

Ordinariness is a quality in movies that likely bothers critics and enthusiasts more than it does other people. The more films you see, the more the enemy becomes not just poor quality but familiarity, simply because even an inoffensive cliche becomes a cinematic earworm after a while — something that ...

We've had a lively summer on PCHH, full of live events and quizzes and special guests and even Stephen hosting episodes (!) (kidding!), but this week, we've got our pal Bob Mondello in the studio for some good old-fashioned movie and TV chatter.

Bob and I recently returned from the ...

When Fox presented its new drama Red Band Society to critics over the summer, creator Margaret Nagle stressed that it was not a derivative of any particular story of sick teenagers that has perhaps permeated the culture in the last five years. Instead, it was inspired by the ...

[This post contains information about where main characters stand relative to each other at the opening of the new seasons of The Mindy Project and New Girl. Be advised.]

Fox's Tuesday comedy hour of New Girl and The Mindy Project is made up of two shows by and about women ...

Well, it's that time again: Monday night brings the premiere of the 19th season — NINETEENTH SEASON — of ABC's Dancing With The Stars, a show that has had some ratings struggles in recent years but has managed to keep on plugging for ... well, 19 seasons. That's 19 seasons ...

Perhaps the most static conversation in American culture is the one about its constant decline. Today's music, today's actors, today's movies, today's media, today's food, today's habits, today's language — it's all going to hell, all of it, and it's taking us with it, no matter when today is.

Well, ...

Cake: Jennifer Aniston plays Claire, a woman we first meet as she's shocking her chronic pain support group with her barbed reactions to the recent suicide of a group member named Nina. Claire's face and body are crisscrossed with scars, and she moves uncomfortably at every moment — which is ...

Steve Carell is not unrecognizable in Foxcatcher, from director Bennett Miller (who also made Moneyball and Capote) but it's instantly clear that his transformation is meant to be substantial. Carell plays the very rich and very strange (and very real) John du Pont, who in 1996 killed Dave Schultz (played ...

The Toronto International Film Festival, the largest film festival in North America, is in full swing. Movie critic Bob Mondello and Monkey See blogger Linda Holmes talk about some of the highlights so far.

Beyond the Lights: Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed the terrific 2000 romance Love & Basketball, and here, she looks at the intersection of love and celebrity. Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is a rapidly rising pop star whose hard-driving mother (Minnie Driver) has been pushing her hard all her life. Career-wise, she's ...

Men, Women & Children: If you can't get enough alarmist local news segments about how all the kids are sexting and everyone is giving up their families for free online pornography that's infected with malware, you'll love Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children, a cautionary tale about fighting the real ...