Category Archives: Review

It’s usually fun — and seemingly easy — whenever a former cast member returns to “Saturday Night Live” to host. There’s no learning curve to overcome, a certain ease with the remaining cast and in the case of Kristin Wiig, a boatload of characters to bring back to the show. In her time, the versatile [...]

Zach Galifianakis is so funny, the “Saturday Night Live” audience was laughing even before he started his monologue of non-sequitirs and odd observations (“one sign you never see in braille: ‘If you see something, say something’”). “I haven’t done anything yet,” he complained. Doesn’t matter. His sad sack look and full beard make him funny [...]

Something is all wrong about Don Draper with a tan. The makers of “Mad Men” have made it their passion to keep everything authentic on the show that returned for its sixth season Sunday. Therefore, they were sure to reflect that the look and tone of 1960s New York was very different than you would [...]

Melissa McCarthy is the rare performer who rather than being an ornament as host of “Saturday Night Live,” a flashy tool to help the rest of the cast do their job, she becomes the center of the show — a comic force around which the rest of the cast can orbit and support. She made [...]

Steve Carell appeared momentarily in Thursday’s farewell season episode of  ”The Office,” but only as part of the clips that served as the trailer to the upcoming TV documentary series, finally coming out, over nine nights in May, we are told, on WVIA, actual call letters of the local PBS station in Scranton. They must have [...]

Al Pacino has put his brand on a number of unusual characters in the past, but he seems particularly well suited to portray an eccentric just about his own age in “Phil Spector” (HBO, 9 p.m.), the new film premiering tonight. He’s a reliable tool in the arsenal of David Mamet, who wrote and directed [...]

It looks like another splendid talent competition, meant to bring out all the young girls in a distant corner of Siberia, bringing them hope with promises of glamor and remuneration through the world of international modeling. In the chilling documentary “Girl Model,” making its television debut tonight to close the 25th season of “POV” (PBS, [...]

It may have had more star cameos in one episode than any in “Saturday Night Live” history. Yet it was the singing and comic talent of host Justin Timberlake that made Saturday’s new episode maybe one of the best of this century. It was his fifth time hosting, which meant he got the keys to [...]

One problem with preceding a new “Saturday Night Live” with one of the greatest in recent memory, featuring Louis C.K., in prime time, 30 minutes before the new live show featuring a comic that, at least to me, has never been funny, and you’re in for bigtime disappointment. And Saturday’s installment of “SNL” with Kevin [...]