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.
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A new 3-D take on a formative Russian war story has its impressive moments, but ultimately feels contrived and confusing.
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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.
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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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Based on actual cases, the documentary-style drama follows officers of Paris' Child Protection Unit through successes and failures and the ambiguity in between. Critic Mark Jenkins says the film features a virtuoso ensemble cast and is both humane and disturbing. (Recommended)
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When a newly elected pope insists he can't take the job, the Vatican scrambles to keep up appearances while reassuring its wavering pontiff. Critic Mark Jenkins says Italian director Nanni Moretti's film is a half-sweet, half-rueful existential drama in which satire is secondary. (Recommended)
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An Indonesian SWAT team fights its way through a tenement to bust a drug lab. Critic Mark Jenkins says Gareth Evans' balletic choreography and masterful storytelling make this the most dynamic Asian action film since the '90s films of John Woo. (Recommended)
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A documentary filmed by an American living in Japan chronicles the immediate aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Critic Mark Jenkins says the film doesn't reach for emotional complexity, but its well-meaning, sentimental approach fits its subject matter.
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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.