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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Bob Mondello looks at the most-produced shows at high schools through seven decades and ponders what the choices made by drama teachers tell us. -
Movie critic Bob Mondello says The Tribe is about big things — love, violence — and made entirely in sign language without any subtitles, voiceovers, or translations of any sort. -
NPR's Bob Mondello reviews Tangerines, an unconventional war drama that was this year's Estonian nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. -
NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews It Follows, a film that he says works some interesting changes on the horror genre. -
Now that the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods has made more than $100 million at the box office in just three weeks, NPR's movie critic Bob Mondello has a modest musical proposal. -
NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews Listen Up Philip and Force Majeure — two movies, he says, with compelling lead men who are impossible to empathize with. -
The creator of Buffy and the Avengers movie is immensely talented, and critic Bob Mondello says Amy Pascale's belligerently upbeat biography might have benefited from his eye for detail and nuance.
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After playing Shrek, Austin Powers and basement-dwelling Wayne Campbell, Myers follows up with a documentary about his agent, Shep Gordon — who also managed Wayne's beloved rock ghoul Alice Cooper. -
Bob Mondello says X-Men: Days of Future Past is awesomely urgent and utterly forgettable all at once, but it'll leave you bouncing with excitement — if you can keep the multiple mutants straight. -
Bob Mondello reviews the latest in a long line of Godzilla movies, this one with Bryan Cranston and other actors who take a back seat to digital tricks as everyone's favorite monster stomps again.
