Year: 2018

Lean On Pete

Written by diana on May 7, 2018. Posted in Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on Lean On Pete

Review written by contributing blogger extraordinaire, Bill Clark Lean on Pete, British director Andrew Haigh’s first American- made film, opens with the camera following behind 15-year-old Charley Thompson as he does his morning run through an impoverished Portland neighborhood under overcast summer skies. Charlie Plummer (no relation to Christopher) brilliantly plays Charley as the son of his single alcoholic father Ray (Travis Fimmel) and is in almost every scene with an award-winning performance. Having left Spokane due to his father’s search for another warehouse job, Charley is uprooted...

“The Alienist”– Something Wicked This Way Comes

Written by diana on April 29, 2018. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on “The Alienist”– Something Wicked This Way Comes

“The Alienist”, a TNT psychological thriller set in 1896, is based on the novel by Caleb Carr. People with mental illness were once considered “alienated from society,” unfathomable to doctors and laymen alike. Those who thought they could treat them were referred to as alienists, pre-dating the Freudian psychiatric movement by more than a decade. The Alienist foreshadows the Freudian theory of the unconscious, and the incipient emergence of forensics (including the first attempts at fingerprinting). If that is not enough, the series also foreshadows the suffragist...

Seven Seconds–Black Lives Matter?

Written by diana on April 20, 2018. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 2 Comments on Seven Seconds–Black Lives Matter?

The Netflix Original series Seven Seconds (premiered February 23) is about race, corrupt police and unequal justice. In the opening scene a hit-and-run of an African-American teenager by a white Jersey City rookie cop (Beau Knapp) is covered up by three other members of the police force. The story is harrowing and complicated, with several subplots that are not resolved. But the seminal theme is clear: does a hit-and-run crime against a young black fifteen-year-old go unpunished, no matter what the evidence or the commitment of the prosecutor? In ten episodes, Seven Seconds gives us...

“The Internet’s Own Boy”: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Written by diana on April 16, 2018. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on “The Internet’s Own Boy”: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Chronicling the life and tragic death of computer wunderkind Aaron Swartz (1986-2013), “The Internet’s Own Boy” is a documentary that pulls the viewer into a life too brief and incredibly brilliant as we witness a young boy’s intellectual development as well as his emotionally opaque inner life. The testimony of those who deeply loved him and grieved over his untimely death at the age of 25 is sensitively and truthfully conveyed. A master in software development (some would argue the computer programmer equivalent of the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking), Aaron...

“Roseanne” (2018): Neither Here Nor There

Written by diana on April 4, 2018. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments on “Roseanne” (2018): Neither Here Nor There

Having the highest ratings for any network sitcom in almost four years, the revival of the ABC television show “Roseanne” had 18.2 million viewers last week, and features most of the original cast. And then this high-concept sitcom begins to evoke memories of the good old days of “Roseanne” and “All in the Family”, with the same old-fashioned couch, the living room that made “Roseanne” a bona fide pioneer (1988-1997) with its focus on blue-collar Americans in Lanford, Illinois. Still set in this fictional town in the Midwest, now Roseanne is back, and Trump...

Seeing Allred–A Hero Before #MeToo

Written by diana on March 26, 2018. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on Seeing Allred–A Hero Before #MeToo

Seeing Allred, which premiered at Sundance in January (and now available on Netflix,) gives us a new portrait of the revolutionary Gloria Allred, the feminist lawyer who singlehandedly took on legal cases including the Equal Rights Amendment (which failed to pass in Congress), and Roe vs. Wade. The list of men Gloria Allred has taken to court on violation of women’s rights reads like a Who’s Who of the not so great: Bill Cosby, Tiger Woods, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump. What propelled Gloria Allred to become the woman she is–an intrepid fighter for women’s rights,...