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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The musical has some of the best-known songs in Broadway history, but it originally had other tunes that almost no one knows. Some of those songs were recently performed for the first time in decades. -
Longtime NPR contributor and film reporter Pat Dowell died Sunday.
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NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews Eastern Boys, a French film that is half love story, half home invasion drama. -
Critic Bob Mondello reviews Selma, Ava DuVernay's film chronicling Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic voting-rights march in 1965. Mondello notes that recent protests make the film resonate today.
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As part of the 50 Great Teachers series, NPR's Bob Mondello looks at what Hollywood has taught us about teachers. -
Bob Mondello listened to reports about spacecraft Philae landing on comet 67P, and it reminded him of certain movies.
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Nichols, perhaps best known for his 1967 classic film, The Graduate,won Emmy, Oscar, Tony and Grammy awards. He died Wednesday at age 83.
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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.
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As the entertainment world mourns the loss of comedian and actor Robin Williams, NPR film critic Bob Mondello offers an appreciation.
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First-time feature filmmaker Dave Green sets his movie apart from Steven Spielberg's classic with found footage, an African-American protagonist and a more central female co-conspirator.
