Mark Jenkins
Mark Jenkins reviews movies for NPR.org, as well as for reeldc.com, 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 WAMU-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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In a thinky, talky take on identity in American culture, a European psychoanalyst (Matthieu Amalric) becomes enthralled with the case of James Picard (Benicio Del Toro), a Blackfoot Indian suffering from psychic trauma after fighting in World War II.
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Guiseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) turns in an English-language romance-cum-mystery about an art auctioneer (Geoffrey Rush) obsessed with a young heiress and collector (Sylvia Hoeks). With Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland.
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Loosely based on a story by Oscar Wilde, the film follows two boys living in poverty in the U.K.; trying to help make ends meet, they get mixed up with a seedy scrap dealer. (Recommended)
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The documentary Nuclear Nation follows the lives of displaced evacuees from Futuba, a town no longer habitable after the 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima power plant.
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Just out of prison, a Pennsylvania man (Christian Bale) finds that his girlfriend has moved on and his younger brother is mixed up with criminals, in Out of the Furnace. Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson and Casey Affleck costar.
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When the body of a Marilyn Monroe-look-alike is found after an apparent suicide in a sleepy French town, a Paris-based mystery novelist decides to investigate. Critic Mark Jenkins says the film is a smart if outlandish whodunit.
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Citing experts in ecology, economics and astrophysics, this documentary on environmental degradation delves into the question, "When does human advancement become more harmful than helpful?" Critic Mark Jenkins says the film's answers are unfocused — but provocative.
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This documentary follows noted game designer Richard Garriott — aka Lord British — whose father was a NASA astronaut, on his own journey to the International Space Station.
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David Fincher's English-language The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is less a reinterpretation than a reiteration — a classier, more expensive version of the lurid Swedish film that came before it.