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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.

  • In their approaches to history, Jobs and Lee Daniels' The Butler could hardly be less similar. Yet the two movies have much in common — just nothing terribly exciting.
  • Sketched in tones as bright and gorgeous as those its namesake artist put to canvas, the gauzy biopic Renoir portrays the domestic disruptions — and the artistic reawakening — of the Impressionist master's final days.
  • 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.