movie reviews – Page 17 – Unhealed Wound

“Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”–Dissembling the American Dream

Written by Diana Paul on February 22, 2021. Posted in Film Festivals, movie reviews. 1 Comment on “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”–Dissembling the American Dream

Toni Morrison (1931-2019), the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, was a complex artist who did not hold back from confronting the worst of human history. The documentary, Toni Morrison: Pieces I Am, is a historical panorama of a slice of history dating from the 1930’s until the conclusion of the film in 2019. Morrison emerges as a powerful, iconic, and formidable moral and intellectual force. The film gives us a retrospective of her groundbreaking novels which challenged the literary status quo, rewarding the reader with imagining black lives...

Ragnarok–Thor on Steroids

Written by Diana Paul on February 14, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on Ragnarok–Thor on Steroids

Ragnarok, a Norwegian fantasy series, takes place in the fictional town of Edda, in Hordaland, the home of the mythological Norse god of thunder, Thor. This modern day Ragnarök follows the story of the Norse mythology of the god Thor. Ragnarok stands for the end of the world and the twilight of the gods, with natural disasters leading to a battle between the gods (Thor) and giants (Jutuls). In this reimagining of the myth, Ragnarok is environmental disaster due to climate change from corporate giants. Edda is owned and controlled by the Jutul...

The Spanish Princess–An Imperial Royal Highness

Written by Diana Paul on February 8, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. No Comments on The Spanish Princess–An Imperial Royal Highness

The Spanish Princess is a ShowTime limited series based on the novels The Constant Princess (2005) and The King’s Curse (2014) by Philippa Gregory. This is a drama about the teenage Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon (Charlotte Hope who played Ramsay Boulton’s lover Myranda in “Game of Thrones”). She becomes the first queen of England betrothed to King Henry VIII (Ruairi O’Connor). Teenage princess Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Spanish Queen Isabella and King...

“News of the World”–A Gift for the Heart

Written by Diana Paul on February 1, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 5 Comments on “News of the World”–A Gift for the Heart

News of the World is based on the Paulette Jiles’s bestseller by the same name. The story follows a sixty-something curmudgeonly widower, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a traveling newspaper reader. Captain Kidd entertains and informs townspeople–some of whom are illiterate– in small communities all over Texas: for the price of a silver dime. The year is 1870, five years after Reconstruction, and Texans still are disgruntled by their defeat after the end of the Civil War. In the opening scene a Black man has been lynched and a ten-year-old...

“Bridgerton”–“Downton Abbey” Meets “Pride and Prejudice”

Written by Diana Paul on January 25, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 2 Comments on “Bridgerton”–“Downton Abbey” Meets “Pride and Prejudice”

Produced by Shonda Rhimes as her first Netflix Original debut, Bridgerton is based on a series of best-selling historical romance novels by Julia Quinn. Set in the Regency era, at the height of London’s aristocratic society, Bridgerton tracks the lives and loves of the sprawling Bridgerton clan. Bridgerton is an amalgamation –part Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and part class snobbery (Downton Abbey).– Queen Charlotte (played with astringent haughtiness by Gilda Rosheuvel) is black. So too is the highly sought after Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page)....

“The Reagans”–Truth At Last

Written by Diana Paul on January 18, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 4 Comments on “The Reagans”–Truth At Last

A four-part Showtime documentary series, The Reagans excoriates the epic failure of journalism to reveal the Reagan White House as it really was, not the fairy tale of near-sainthood of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan, Jr., the only son of the Reagans, is the primary source for details about his parents’ most private moments and their secrets behind closed doors. One of his more frankly understated comments: “My father was a strange fellow to be president of this country.” How the carefully curated story becomes the reality is the emphatic warning of The Reagans. Beginning...