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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With Divergent, Hollywood turns to another hit young-adult trilogy for inspiration. Shailene Woodley stars as a 16-year-old searching for her place in a divided dystopian society. -
A new 3-D take on a formative Russian war story has its impressive moments, but ultimately feels contrived and confusing. -
With an eye on an international audience, this Shanghai-set adaptation of the 18th-century French novel focuses most of its energy on being visually appealing. Critic Mark Jenkins says the setting of the film isn't entirely justified — but it does serve as a glossily seductive distraction. -
Eric Lartigau's French psychological drama follows an aspiring photographer who assumes another man's identity. While the plot may lend itself to the tropes of a thriller, critic Mark Jenkins says it is more focused on the quiet, internal mechanisms of the protagonist's mind.
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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. -
John Turturro's ode to Naples celebrates the zesty cultural soup of the Italian city, from traditional storytelling roots to modern hip-hop influences. It's a wide-ranging, if shallow, impressionistic history lesson set to almost nonstop song and dance.
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When a government-backed megadevelopment threatens to turn his neighborhood into a new skyscraper complex, an activist takes his homeowners rights to the streets. -
A circus trainer embarks on a decade-long odyssey to find his elephant a good home in Lisa Leeman's engrossing character study. The documentary film is short on drama, but full of questions about the animal (and human) psyches. -
In Natalia Smirnoff's debut film, a bored Buenos Aires housewife discovers a knack for solving jigsaw puzzles — and a way out of her stifling routine. Smirnoff's premise may be modest, but it's also a satisfying and intimate portrayal of one woman's subtle metamorphosis. -
Action director Andrew Lau slows his usual pace in A Beautiful Life, a tale of unlikely love between a Hong Kong hustler and a Beijing-born policeman. A second-act slump into sentimentalism undercuts smart, sweet cultural commentary, but the film is a fine showcase for star Shu Qi.
